Charles La Trobe Year 9 Camp Blog

On the Monday afternoon of June 3rd  2024, the Summit welcomed the year nine students and teachers of Charles La Trobe. Students were promptly shown their accommodation, where they would stay for the next couple of days! After settling, they were welcomed into the Lodge, where Team Leader Spinks discussed The Summit’s recipe for the best camp ever and the ingredients that were the Five Keys to camp. These keys are:

1.    Have Fun

2.    Play All In

3.    Make Lots of Mistakes

4.    Get Comfortable Being Uncomfortable

5.    Don’t Go Home Wondering What If

Without further ado, we all headed down to the stage and started with the three tribes going out and doing some icebreakers (Tiles, Key Punch and Where is George). Then Sara and Jakob taught everyone how to put on a helmet and harness, followed by Spinks introducing an epic goal-setting strategy called Target, Stretch, and Super Stretch that would help us to grow our comfort zones and conquer challenging activities.

Campers completed their two first activity rotations. The campers' activities were Rock Wall, Bush Challenge, and Flying Fox.  This range of activities challenged people’s bravery, team spirit, support, trust, creativity and problem-solving skills. At the end of the day, the groups were told about free time areas and something called GMICs = "Great Moments in Camp” - this is all about writing down and acknowledging some of the incredible moments we’ve seen.

Day two started with an epic talk about setting a morning intention with a video of a song to Bon Jovi's Livin' on a Prayer, learning to focus on what we can control, rather than things we cannot, like the weather and other people.  The students were asked to think about who they wanted to be and how they wanted to show up for themselves, others, and the activities. They played a Jockeys game before getting into the park and beginning the three activity rotations. The new activities run were; Leap of Faith, Sky Bridge and Laser Skirmish.

After one more rotation of activities and some afternoon tea, it was time to do the famous Monster Course. This was a feat of teamwork, strength and resilience.  As students completed the course, the groups were unaware they were running two laps of the course, so they got themselves together and then got the second lap done! The run's winner was the team with the most significant improvement time from their first lap. All teams improved their times; all three teams improved by 8 minutes or more, well done.

As the last day rolled around, heaps of GMICs were read out. Then the students were walked through a gratitude session, where the students were shown a video called ‘No Arms, No Legs, No Worries' by speaker Nik V., followed by asking them to think about who they are grateful for and what they are thankful for, not to go home wondering ‘what if’ and to ‘check back in’ for the last two rotations of activities to go. Heading down to the stage to do a game called Crane Tiger Egg to warm the students up. During the final two rotations, three groups temporarily merged into two as the students completed the Giant Swing and the Cave.

Once the activities were completed the students were asked to get back into their three groups and vote for someone in their tribe who represented/embodied the Five Keys the most throughout camp. As a reward for the Values winners, they got to spin at The Summit's WW2 army tank while their peers watched and cheered them on. (These are listed below, along with the results)

Thanks again for coming to camp and joining us in having all the fun; all the best for the rest of the year.

Spinks, Odile, Jakob and Sara 🙂