To school for another round of meetings with the excellent junior high staff and the Grade 1/2 teacher (Linda) about the upcoming team-building orienteering event. Leah also came; she's a parent who has volunteered to coordinate the many chaperones.
As usual it was an excellent and productive meeting. It is so nice to work with people who are committed to making the orienteering thing happen, and see the value, and look for ways to enhance the experience; I don't have to do any convincing or arm-twisting. They are dedicating a huge amount of classroom time to the preparation: 1 period for my lecture, 1 period to review the homework and have teams plan their route, 1 period on how to work together as a team, 1 period on the older kids preparing to work with the younger kids, 1 period for actually getting the older and younger kids together, and smaller chunks of time to discuss things like trust, responsibility, safety, logistics and kids' feelings about the trip. Plus 1 period afterward to do a post-mortem reflection on the experience. Isn't that cool? And all this in the context of teachers scrambling to find enough time to teach the required curriculum each year in the face of losing tons of time to testing.
Linda told us about the
money Target is providing for field trips. This is really awesome, because one of the hindrances to me taking kids to the woods in the past has been the cost of renting the bus.
After the meeting I got together with Leah and went over the chaperones' roles and how she'd contact everyone and many other such things.