Duke of Edinburgh Award
- Nicole Watts
- Sep 21, 2017
- 2 min read
April 17th, 2016
This term I joined the school Duke of Edinburgh group as a teacher in charge. It has been great to get involved in an extra curricular activity I completed back when I was a teenager; offering as much advice as I can about the structure and content of the award. Over the past month I have been communicating with Makahika Outdoor Pursuits Centre to organise the initial mountain safety training for our Bronze Award participants (conversation below). We now have 18 participants attending their school holiday programme which will sign of this initial training and mean that next term we can begin supporting them to organise their practice and qualifying expedition's!
May 13th, 2017
Duke of Edinburgh went really well in 2016! We had a really strong turn out of keen participants. Once I gained my permanent teaching position at Waiopehu College I had the reigns handed over to me, so to speak. At the end of last year I spent many hours created a handbook for the kids> I wanted to make this really comprehensive so that they knew exactly what they had to do to meet the requirements of the award and what they needed to do to meet the requirements of our school. They key was basically gaining consistency in expectations.
I presented this to the group this year and have had really positive feedback about it. We seem to have lost a number of students this year and at a guess I would assume that these students didn't realise how time-consuming and intensive the award is. The ones that have stuck around are doing fantastic! I have just had my first group completely finish all of the requirements. They are just in the process of writing up their report and we will send off their paperwork.
September 21st, 2017
The number of students involved in the award has declined somewhat. I have a feeling that the students are realising just how much work is involved in completing the award and perhaps this is not something they can cope with. Despite this, we have had our first two students complete the Bronze level of the award and I couldn't be more proud of them! The girls worked so hard to get there. They have eagerly begun Silver training and are already planning their next expeditions.
November 15th, 2017
Outdoor Training New Zealand (OTNZ) have just formed a Manawatu-Horowhenua Hub for DoE Award Leaders. Unfortunately, I was unable to attend the first meeting but a Facebook group has been created from this to open up communication among leaders. It will be good to have the support and to be kept more up-to-date with the happenings of how the award is run.
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