Girls Camping Trip

This past weekend was the first Girls trip that was taken as part of the C.E.L.L. program. We had a great weekend and the girls did awesome. This is a picture of us getting ready to leave Saturday morning and come home. We had four girls go on the trip with us this time. We always want more to go, but we have a great time with the ones that do go. The girls participated well and were not afraid to get their hands dirty as you will see later.

This picture is at the school Friday afternoon when we were loading up the vans.

Everyone did a great job pitching in to get the tents set up

The girls had to show off their work. This is one of our three tents that was purchased with the original grant money that we received. These tents are big enough to fit 4 double airbeds comfortably.

Guys Camping Trip

I thought it important to share a little about the guys camping trip and what exactly we did while on the trip. The pictures up top are of the same tree on a gentleman's land that we went for a hike on. His land has had at least three known Indian villages on it at different times in history. We felt like it would be a great opportunity to take a picture under a tree that has had seen so many ceremonies. This was the starting point for the Geo cache activity that we did on Saturday morning. The gentleman that let us use his land was gracious enough to come out and get to know our guys. He was very knowledgeable and taught the guys many things about the Indians and their relationship to Perryton. He taught the guys how to use a metal detector and GPS units.

If you look at the picture of us under the tree, you will see an outcrop in the middle. Our hike ended on top of those rocks, and this was the view that we were looking at the morning.

The guys had a great time looking for our "buried treasure". The treasure was a Sacagawea gold dollar for every camper and student at our school. This was an awesome gift that I believe our students will cherish for years to come.

First Post

So blogging is something that I have not been into until recently. My sisters' blog is one that I follow very closely and have enjoyed seeing it change. Some of you may not know, but I teach Social Studies at an Alternative Campus. Now some may think that I work in a dangerous environment, but really it is an awesome opportunity to work with students who just need a little encouragement and direction. So onto the main reason that I am starting this blog; Camping. At the end of last year I was thinking about what it is that I do here. Do I just teach Social Studies, or am I here to help students become ready for there future? So I decided that I wanted to teach my students things that I learned when I was growing up about character and maturity. I learned about these things through camping with my family growing up. Long story short a co-teacher and I wrote a grant to create a camping trip and we received the money to do this. The picture you see here is one of the first trip ever taken with the money received. Now, we are getting ready to take our second trip this weekend, and this will be a girls camping trip. Before you freak out, we do have enough female sponsors to cover everything.

This is another picture from the first camping trip of all the guys working with the metal detector.

I guess I should explain the name C.E.L.L. That is the title of the camping program and it stands for Camp, Experience, Learn, and Live. That is what we want from our students, we want for these trips to introduce them to things that they may not have experienced before, and then take that knowledge and live.