The bus transporting our sixth graders back to school after their overnight trip to Frost Valley Camp in the Catskills arrived on 89th Street this afternoon filled with animated, happy - and, perhaps a bit tired and rumpled - boys who already were sharing stories from their first overnight experience as a class.
Over two days, Frost Valley’s “Challenge with Choice” philosophy provided the boys the opportunity to challenge themselves by solving problems as a group and individually, while also emphasizing the importance of respecting individual differences. As the boys operated outside their comfort zones in various outdoor activities, including high-ropes courses, they learned to lean on and build trust with each other and to build confidence within themselves.
Last month, over three days at The Pocono Environmental Education Center, our seventh graders conducted field work in forest and stream ecology, including wading in streams and collecting water and specimen samples, traversing hiking paths and assessing the forest habitat, and traveling by canoe to monitor pond and stream ecosystems. When not in the field, the boys learned about the geologic and cultural history of the Delaware River region.
They also bonded as a class by playing sports, overcoming team challenges, wayfinding in the woods, navigating in the dark, roasting marshmallows, and telling spooky stories. The group practiced ‘leaving no trace’ while staying on-site: living with as minimal impact as possible, while preserving threatened wildlife and habitats.
Overnight trips like these two "mountain" adventures, begin in the sixth grade and also include the sixth-grade visit to Washington D.C., our seventh grade's two-week Spain Summer Study, and the eighth grade's 10-day Italian Study Tour. In addition to providing multi-disciplinary learning experiences, the trips foster community and togetherness, expanding and deepening the friendships so important to the emotional development of boys. Travel is the best teacher.
As a school for boys, Saint David's celebrates the joys of boyhood and tailors teaching and learning to the ways boys learn best: through formative relationships with teachers who know them and care about them, through action and positive competition, through bonding experiences like those at Frost Valley and in the Poconos. All done in service of our guiding aspiration:
that they be good men.
www.saintdavids.org
