I don’t know if I’ve posted about this before on here, but I’m a year advisor. I’ve been with my year group since they were in yr6, and we were doing transition activities. My year group are now in year 11, just starting their HSC year. Up until this year we haven’t had camps at my school for as long as I have been there. Our new principal, however, was really open to the idea of running some. So, after a lot of organisation, this week we headed off to Vision Valley. Three days of Crossroads activities, canoeing, abseiling, getting to know each other and basically having an amazing time with this fantastic group of young people.

I’m a bit of a stress head. The words “control freak” have been thrown about occasionally. I can’t even begin to tell you my stress levels over the past few weeks, as things have fallen into place for this camp, sometimes not the way I would expect them to. But it was all totally worth it. I’m now in evaluation mode, and as I look back at the past few days there are a couple of things that have come out of this camp that really struck me as amazing.

Teenagers will surprise you.
I like to think that I know my year group pretty well. I take my role as year advisor very seriously, and I spend a lot of time getting to know my students. This week, though, I found myself on a number of occasions looking at them in amazement. One kid, a bit of a rat bag at school but very likeable, held everyone captivated around the campfire with an impromptu Bear Grylls impersonation. The quietest girl in the group, usually found with her nose buried in a book, shocked everyone dancing away at the disco, and taking every opportunity to talk to people she usually wouldn’t look twice at. Yet another usually difficult boy told me that his favourite part of camp was “when we did that letter writing thing where we said nice stuff about each other. I never knew people thought about me like that and it was awesome to read what everyone wrote.” I was expecting him to say he loved the abseiling. 45 kids, some of whom I had expected to not be interested in coming, all working together, willingly building connections with people outside their friendship groups, and taking risks. Being supportive of each other. Encouraging others on, and being totally amazing!

Colleagues will surprise you.
I was so lucky to have four amazing colleagues come along on camp with me. I was also equally privileged to have many colleagues back at school supporting us by covering classes, an managing so many other things to make sure that everything ran smoothly. I work with some amazing people, so I was expecting them to help out, but I was not expecting the level at which they would offer their support. I was completely blown away by their commitment to supporting me and building connections with the students on camp. I don’t usually delegate (did I mention control freak?) but last week I realised that there was no way I was going to get everything done that I wanted to. So, against all my better judgement, I sent an email asking for the people coming on camp to organise an activity each. In my head I was making contingency plans – not because I expected them to fail but just because letting go of control is not easy for me and I needed to know that everything would be sorted. They surprised me – not because the activities were planned, but because they were planned with such thoughtfulness and attention to detail with regards to my camp goals that I don’t think I could have done them in a better myself. Usually, in the back of my head I’m thinking about how I would have done it, but it was so gratifying to be able to sit back and watch other people run something and be okay with it – more than that, to be proud of it. It was a very surprising and unexpectedly wonderful experience for me, and something I’m going to keep reminding myself of in the future. I think it’s a lesson I need to learn.

I will surprise me.
I can be okay with not being in control of everything. I’m a bit terrified of heights… Okay a lot terrified of heights. When booking team activities, I was tempted to book in a “leap of faith” activity, but chickened out when I realised that I couldn’t ask students to do something I wouldn’t be prepared to do myself. Instead, I booked an activity called “zip line and power fan”, which I envisaged was something like a flying fox. I figured I could probably cope with that. When we arrived at the activity, I discovered that the zip line part was a flying fox activity, but the power fan was quite different. It involved climbing to the top of a power pole, then jumping off as your descent was controlled by some kind of winch. Just looking at it made me nauseous. It was the last thing that I wanted to do. But I’d spent the past two days encouraging my students to step out of their comfort zones, and to try something new… I couldn’t not do it myself. It was the most terrifying thing I have ever done in my life. I bawled my eyes out pretty much the whole time… The video taken by another one of the teachers is not very flattering at all. Why do people never cry in real life like they do in the movies? But I did it, to my utter surprise. I still don’t think I’m over the terror, but the comments from my students and from my colleagues has made me very glad, and incredibly proud that I took that step off the edge. Yet another lesson I think I need to learn.

I feel like, through the course of this camp, I have learnt more then the students who were supposed to benefit from it. I guess that’s one of the wonderful things about our profession – that we get to demonstrate that learning is lifelong, and that it’s not just something that we impart, but that is something that is a part of us. Thank you, year 11, I will never forget this week!