The autumn wind is blowing, and temperatures are still comfortable – it is a wonderful time for travel and study. During this golden November, we ushered in our middle school’s Grade 6 “Independent Youth” walking course, where students collectively experienced a rich and wonderful two days of outdoor education. During these two days, the students not only learned knowledge and skills, but more importantly, experienced and felt in practice what it means to be independent and ‘grown up’.
The location for this particular walking course was Meihua Island, Jiaxing, Zhejiang Province. Meihua Island, a historical site bearing a thousand years of civilization, is named “Meihua Island” because of the zigzagged and crisscrossed rivers, which divide the terrain into five wonderful ‘pieces’ – the shape is like a plum blossom. In a quaint Meihua Island town south of the Yangtze River, the school provided students with a variety of outdoor activities.
In the course, students faced a series of challenges, including a ‘protecting the egg’ game, a high altitude rope course, orienteering, bamboo rafting, the building of shelters, and cooking farm food.
In the ‘protecting the egg’ task, students needed to learn how to protect their ‘little baby’ from breaking. This task not only evaluated students’ carefulness, patience, and sense of responsibility, but in the process of protecting their eggs, they also came to understand the hardships of their parents.
Students challenged themselves in the high-altitude rope course, bravely crossing the broken bridge high in the air while reaching out to grab the horizontal support bar. This activity not only allowed students to exercise their courage, but also stimulated their potential and their ability to cope with challenges.
Orienteering offered students a different kind of challenge. Students needed to learn survival skills such as filtering dirty water, making fishing gear, finding wild vegetables, drilling wood for fire, making bamboo rafts, and building shelters. In the process of this activity, students constantly observed, thought about, and solved problems, and felt both the hardships and fun of survival in the field. These projects not only exercised their creativity, but also cultivated a spirit of teamwork.
A student who is able to cook farm food would undoubtedly be a most impressive student! Cooking a table of farm food is not an easy task for the sixth-grade students, but our students worked hard to help each other to make it happen. Some students helped to make the cooking fire, some students washed vegetables, some students cut vegetables, and some students fried vegetables. They all obtained a tacit understanding of how to prepare a meal. After a period of arduous work, the students finally completed the cooking of the delicious farm dishes. The smells were wonderful! The homemade food was delicious!
In this walking course, students not only learned knowledge and skills, but also learned self-discipline and self-reliance in the face of challenges. Although the walking course ended, our students will continue to meet the challenges of the future with a spirit of independence and the courage to be not afraid of difficulties. These valuable experiences and gains will inspire students to ‘aim for the top’ in their future lives!
Every time the school organizes an outing, I become extremely excited. This time, I woke up before 06:30 and arrived at our school to discover that everyone was also so excited – all the faces could not hide their happiness. On the bus, there was much happy laughter. During the day there were a variety of team expansion activities, and in the evening, the boys in our class were anxious to cook. After eating their plate of chicken and tofu fish stew, I was incredibly happy. This humanities walking course was exceptionally good, not only letting me learn a lot of skills, but also promoting the relationship between students and teachers.
This ‘independent youth’ humanities walk taught me a lot. The “Protecting the Egg” project made us more responsible, treating an egg as our own child, protecting it, and not letting it break. I used a bag and tissue to wrap it tightly, to ensure that it would not be damaged, but in an activity, it was lost…a little lost. There were also many projects such as filtering dirty water, fishing, etc., which allowed us to learn many new skills. There were also exciting high-altitude activities, which give us a lot of courage to face future difficulties. In the evening, our group cooked dishes together, braised chicken with potatoes, stir-fried green vegetables, scrambled eggs with leeks, and so on. Finally, we successfully tasted the hard-made meals. Learning can happen not only in the classroom, but in the outdoors as well – experiencing life is a part of learning.
As soon as I woke up that morning I was super excited because the day would usher in our annual Humanities Walk. The class teacher, Ms. Jiang, helped to get us settled, and we then set off! After an hour and a half, we arrived at the destination for this course – Meihua Zhou, Jiaxing City. What impressed me the most was that in the evening the activity that we had all looked forward to finally and actually happened – cooking farm food! We prepared the ingredients in an orderly way; everyone was going to show their cooking skills. When the table was covered with the food made by the students – there was a shredded potatoes dish that Ji had cooked three times and the sweet potatoes were well roasted. I left these good memories in my mobile phone photo storage!
