Seventh and eighth-grade students from CHSD170's Roosevelt School's recently completed a day of outdoor education activities at Camp Manitoqua in Frankfort, IL.
The activity, initiated and coordinated by school principal Erin Salamon, was designed to afford students an opportunity to spend a day in team building activities that would prove beneficial during their daily school experience.
"We, at Roosevelt School, enthusiastically embrace the opportunities to offer our students extracurricular activities such as this one that enhance the learning process and provide exercises and programs that will benefit every aspect of their lives," Salamon said.
The school's seventh and eighth-grade teachers, Nicole Govert, Stacy Jacobi, Courtney Albert, and Dan Downs, wholeheartedly embraced and supported the idea of the new experience that included challenges such as a high ropes course designed to help students to address and overcome their individual fears.
"We worked to make connections between the difficulties faced in each of the activities with the difficulties that the students would face in their everyday lives," Govert said.
"Each task required them to reconsider their normal strategies for conquering challenges and overcome obstacles, doubts, and fears, and they left feeling accomplished and empowered."
The eighth-grade were enthusiastic in sharing their satisfaction with the activities.
"It was great," said Kaylen Jones. "I learned a lot on the trip and actually started to get along with people that I thought I didn't like."
"It was an unforgettable experience," added Victor Chacon.
"It was so much better than I thought it would be," Sean Langston added. "I want to go back?"
According to its website, "Camp Manitoqua provides a setting and programs that help individuals experience outdoor activities promoting fellowship and providing a reprieve from the hectic pace of everyday life."
Salamon wholeheartedly endorsed the Camp Manitoqua experience as being beneficial for the students and looks forward to her school's sixth-grade classes attending a session at the camp in October.
"The sixth-graders are very excited about the trip, especially so since our junior-high level students have been sharing memories of their wonderful day at the camp," she said.
"It was, in fact, such a rewarding experience that our seventh and eighth-graders have been asking to return to Camp Manitoqua and to stay for a longer time."