Outward Bound Adventure Weekend for Gracemount Pupils
In the last weekend of February, 8 Gracemount High school pupils along with 3 teachers - Mr Wyllie, Mr Goodfellow and Ms Sinclair made the long trip north to take part in an outdoor education course at Loch Eil, near Fort William. This was run by the Outward Bound Trust (Scotland) who run adventure and personal development courses. The aim of these courses is to help young people of all backgrounds develop self-confidence, leadership and teamwork skills.
The purpose of this particular trip was for us to evaluate the outward bound experiences on offer and to help us as a pupil body to plan future trips for other Gracemount pupils in the future. We decided which activities we liked and which activities would best develop important skills needed by Gracemount High School pupils. Through contacts developed by the school we have been very lucky to gain funds from a benefactor to allow further trips to happen.
The weekend was really action packed and included activities such as rock climbing, abseiling, parachute style jump from a high platform, sailing and rowing. The highlight for many was when we arrived on Friday night. This is when we did the “jog and dip!” activity that involved jogging to the nearby loch and then jumping in from a floating pontoon 75 metres from shore. The water, as you can image in February, was freezing! On Sunday morning we were all tied together and climbed an enormous tree, 35 metres high, nicked- named ‘Boy George’.
From the weekend we learn’t many valuable things about ourselves and others. These included that teamwork was essential to complete many of the activities, that we should be more confident in our abilities and what it takes to be an effective leader of a group.
Quotes from pupils on the course:
“My favourite part of going to Loch Eil was having the experience of many great and adventurous activities, especially the jog and dip.” - Daniel Carr
“I love going out and doing all the activities and it helped me to develop my leadership and teamwork skills.” - Ellie Meikle
“The thing I enjoyed the most was learning how to sail. It was a great experience and I would love to go back again.” - Hannah Mitchell
“I enjoyed doing all the activities and everything I experienced at Loch Eil. It helped me to develop my teamwork and leadership skills.” - Connor Pontone
Loving the blog! I'm going to look into this and perhaps set one up myself.
ReplyDeleteDon't know what interesting things to put on it though. Perhaps a Hearts for Europe poll or statistics on the latest computer viruses.
Cheers,
Steven Whyte :-)
How about some of your exciting podcasts?
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't want to put the students through that drivel!! :-(
ReplyDelete