My students come from various economic backgrounds. Over half of the students live in poverty. Our 5th grade has a Wilderness Education Program where we travel 4 hours the last week of school to have a one of a kind experience. For a lot of these students, this is the first time that they have ever left their home, let alone, been away from their parents.
For our students who live in poverty, this experience is one that makes a huge impact on their lives.
Since our program has been run for 40 years, we have lots of campers throughout the years who have come back as volunteers. Many of them speak to how our Wilderness Education Camp has made a positive impact on their lives.
Since our demographics that our students come from is changing, camp is continually getting harder and can be a financial hardship for our students. We have amazing volunteers that give up their vacation time to be a counselor at camp, but money is still an issue for us to have all of our kids go to camp.
My Project
At out Wilderness Education Camp, one of our classes is orienteering. Students learn how to pace, use a compass, and compete on an orienteering course. This is a skill that many of our students have not learned. We teach them how a compass, when used correctly is much more accurate than a GPS.
With these compasses, we will have enough for each student to get to have one of their own and not have to share with a partner.
This makes it much easier for them to learn how to use a compass since they will get to use one the entire time they are at the class and not have to switch off and on with a partner.
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