Outdoor Education

 

New Zealand is blessed with spectacular and diverse natural landscapes and the lower South Island, in particular, is a great adventure playground for outdoor enthusiasts. The goal of this department is to utilise these resources, and use them as the basis for teaching skills related to the outdoors. Skills that the department deem important include: communication, personal and group responsibility, a care for the environment and a “can do” attitude when participating in challenging, stimulating activities. Other specific skills relating to specialised activities will be taught, so that ultimately students are able to be responsible for themselves and others in the outdoors, especially at senior level.

 

The aims of the department are very clear. Sedentary behaviours have become more and more prominent as we have entered into a new digital age, especially in young adolescents. By introducing students to opportunities involving exciting and stimulating learning activities in the outdoors, it is hoped that students are then likely to want to get involved in such pursuits in the future. Through these activities, a number of other physical and social skills, as previously mentioned, are rehearsed and reflected on as well.

 

Students are introduced to Outdoor Education in Year 9 where they participate in a day walk, in the Catlins on the Wisp Track, and at the end of the year  they experience the thrill of rafting on the Taieri River.

In Year 10, students spend 2 nights at Tautuku Lodge during the first half of the year. Here they participate in a range of adventure based learning activities, while experiencing some of the beauty that goes hand in hand with the Catlins area.

 

 

Outdoor Education becomes a specialist subject in Year 12, where students are able to work towards gaining credits for NCEA by completing specific unit standards. The contexts through which students can achieve these credits are varied and include: adventure based learning with Adventure Southland, kayaking on the Clutha River, tramping in Fiordland, snow caving in the mountains of Central Otago, rock-climbing and mountain biking. This exhaustive list really caters for a range of abilities, with each activity offering a new challenge and a new set of skills.

 

 

Possible career options that might extend from the completion of the senior course are numerous. Essentially, a number of the skills taught also help to develop confidence and the kinds of positive attitudes that employers would be looking for in an individual. Possible career paths include and are not limited to the following:

  

Barry Munro

Glen Ward

Kim Fairbrother

Fiona Lindsay

Anna O’Sullivan