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HAVERGAL COLLEGE
Grade 3 Mansfield Outdoor Learning Centre excursion
Here are two examples to consider:
In our newly developed Grade 3 to 6
leadership excursion to the Mansfield
Outdoor Centre, our younger students
head outdoors to face a series of initiative
challenges and group dynamics. This
customized initiative and leadership
development program was designed by a
team of faculty representatives in the Junior
School working closely with the outdoor
education experts at Mansfield. The program
immerses students in new and unexpected
experiences that help them develop a shared
practice and vocabulary of leadership. This
shared language and understanding is then
used throughout the year as a framework for
Havergal’s ongoing emphasis on initiative,
collaboration and challenge.
A second illustration lies at the other end of
the spectrum: the international excursions
that immerse our students in a foreign
culture and a complex social experience.
One example is the adventure last June that
took a group of students to Nicaragua to
build a school—a trip similar to the Costa
Rica and South Africa excursions happening
this year. In this environment, our girls
developed a perspective not available at
home and acquired new skills and insights
every day in order to achieve their individual
and group goals.
If you read the excursion blog at the time
(www.havergal.on.ca/excursionblog), you’ll
remember this scene: “The girls worked
in small groups through all of the various
tasks on the job site under the watchful and
patient tutelage of our local construction
crew. They were laying brick, sifting, tying
rebar, splitting cinderblocks, etc.”What
did each girl need to call on within herself
to achieve mastery? How did she help her
team to finish their task? When exhausted or
overwhelmed, what individual fortitude and
group resolve were further strengthened?
Whether in Grade 3 or Grade 12, each of
these trips pushed our girls to a new limit.
You can see that as they grow older, our
excursions offer increasing autonomy and
complexity so that students are always faced
with age-appropriate challenges.
A woman who makes a difference in the
world draws on the values of integrity,
inquiry, courage and compassion. These
values are developed through understanding,
reflection and opportunities for action. In
other words, when our students live our
school values, it is a form of practice—a
way of doing built upon a way of being.
Excursions provide the real-world,
unscripted experiences needed to rehearse
and apply the values that underlie each girl’s
unique leadership mindset and voice.
Heads’ Message