It was a very different fall for STS outdoor education trips. Adaptability and personal agency* are two of the life skills we hope students will further develop through their STS outdoor experiences and there have been few years when the learning opportunities have been more broad, real, and obvious than this year.
Our COVID-19 outdoor trip adaptations in OE include one day on campus, an overnight in the STS campsites, and a day out in the mountains. Here, to our knowledge, is the first ever STS on-campus backpacking trip.
While COVID-19 created a very dynamic landscape, STS offered a number of summer programs to create a wide variety of student learning experiences.
The Strathcona-Tweedsmuir School Global Scholar Diploma was born out a desire to encourage and recognize students in their growth as practical, contributing global citizens. Its goal is to challenge students to record and reflect on their actions and to continually expand their current boundaries of comfort and influence in order to positively impact the wider world around them.
Getting outside has always been good for one's learning, health and wellbeing, but with the current orders to stay home and social distance, it's become essential now more than ever to keep moving and stay active.
It’s 2:00 a.m. and even the birds are asleep. The forest is dark, with a mixture of shadows and shapes that lead one’s imagination to create all sorts of fairy tale images; walking, talking trees (Ents, if you are a J.R.R. Tolkien’s fan), trolls, witches and big, bad wolves.
When Mr. Keller joined STS in 1972, no Outdoor Education (OE) program was being offered. Because Mr. Keller was an avid outdoors-man, students soon began asking Mr. Keller to take them along on his trips and he agreed.
As anyone who has hiked pathways with young children will attest, children, with their boundless curiosity, see much that their older companions miss. They can spend an entire day on a journey that travels deep rather than far. Watching bugs on the ground, picking and devouring wild strawberries, wondering how birds fly... their questions know no end. So many wonders and so much to learn.
