Over the past term, many of our students across the College have been involved in their year level camps and Connections programs. As parents you may have received varied levels of feedback from your children about camp. As I reflect on my own school days, camps were often some of the most challenging and most rewarding moments and I’m sure on return from camp I gave my own parents feedback about how hard or how tiring or how awful the food was. But looking back, these are the parts of our schooling journey that we remember above others. For me, being dropped on the side of the road, knowing I was going to spend the next 24 hours on my own, spending the night on my own under a tarp before walking back to base alone across the whole next day was pretty challenging. However, as a 15-year-old, I still remember the feeling of incredible success when I arrived back at base having accomplished the challenge. I learnt something then that really formed a part of my character and how I approached future tough challenges in life.

At the core of our Mission and Vision here at St Andrew’s is Personal Capacity. This vision is about providing opportunities for students to learn and grow, to become the very best they can be, and we know from years of experience and research that a good deal of growth takes place in a setting when faced with both physical and mental challenges.

On every camp and Connections trip there are elements of fun and excitement as students see and explore new places and opportunities.  However, there are also times when students are going to feel uncomfortable, they are probably going to get wet, smelly and dirty, they may do something that really, really pushes them. It is these moments that are actually the most important. Everybody needs to learn how to be uncomfortable, for things to be difficult, tough and to realise that it’s actually ok. Being in nature is one of the best ways to teach this. As parents, the best thing we can do is look beyond the initial responses about the challenges that is the initial feedback in conversations with our children and shift our focus to the long-term benefit of these experiences. It is hard to do, but our goal as parents is to deal with both the here and now in ways that ultimately strengthens them for the future.

I need to be clear here, I am not advocating for a tough and rigid approach to outdoor education. All camps should have the appropriate balance of encouragement, support and safety with challenge, difficulty and sometimes failure, all provided within the context of a safe learning environment. Some students are always going to really dislike being out in nature, and others will take much more to it. But there is so much research around how we develop resilience in our children and the podcasts and websites all agree, it is found through working through hardships and of course, in the case of our school programs, within the safe and supportive context of a controlled program. When so much of childhood is now spent indoors in a comfortable temperature, looking at some sort of paper or a screen, it becomes even more important to get students out into nature, with all of its benefits.

Many schools shy away from these opportunities or become discouraged. For any school, these opportunities take an enormous amount of planning, energy, resources and risk analysis. It’s not easy for our staff to leave their own lives and families to take our students away. However, at St Andrew’s we will continue to see them as an important part of building the personal capacity within our students. Our aim is always to reflect and refine what we do, no camp is ever going to be perfect for every student, we are always aware of this. If I could reiterate the very simple message I shared with parents at the commencement of the year…. we all want the very best outcomes for the students at this College. Camps and Outdoor Education build so many skills, both practical and personal, into the lives and character of our students. They are of immense value in a balanced education of a good school.