Outdoor Education
Outdoor Education is an exciting, innovative elective course that allows hundreds of students in grades 6-8 the opportunity to develop team-building and group communication abilities. Outdoor Education students have also run Pershing’s school-wide paper recycling effort since the fall of 2000.
In 2001, Outdoor Education added a low-ropes course, and during the summer of 2004, Pershing’s PTO funded four high-ropes elements that challenge kids to go beyond their perceived physical, emotional, and social limitations to achieve things they never before thought were possible.
In general, adventure programming includes challenges —moments when students are on the brink of both success and failure. Adventure is about taking emotional and “apparent” physical risks where students see the natural consequences before them. For students to participate in any program like this, an atmosphere of both real fun and a commitment to safety must exist , a space where students are free to speak their minds and push themselves to limits.
Many students would have no other experience of the beauty and power of the outdoors or their own abilities in it, were it not for their participation in Outdoor Education. The structure of this class is informative, motivating, and hands-on.
