Leaving Independence is an episodic feature about discovery, character growth development, and independent thinking. Dave Vixie is an eighth grade teacher out of Northern California. It is not too often that you come across an educator who is so passionate about learning that he will go to great lengths to teach a student to become a thinker not a reflector. This particular project he calls a “simulation” where the kids are encouraged to experience what it would have really been like for the early travelers. They are to think in 19th century terms. In this first episode the students start out on a journey retracing the footsteps of the early pioneers beginning where the Humbolt River ends. Their final destination is 120 miles away in California. All along the trail Dave Vixie teaches spontaneous object lessons that are analogous to real life decisions that even adults face.