Surveying the great outdoors

Woodstock student outdoor education survey

Surveying the great outdoors

The great outdoors and the educational opportunities it provides has always been a key part of life at Woodstock School. Given our incredible location in the Himalayas, you could say that it comes with the territory. But there’s always more we can do to make the outdoor experience at Woodstock even more extraordinary, and the recent arrival of our new Head of Outdoor Education, Nathan Rector, is a useful catalyst which gives us the opportunity to re-evaluate our programme.

As the most important element in any educational initiative, we wanted to find out what it is exactly that our students enjoy about outdoor education at Woodstock and what else they’d like the opportunity to experience. So this week we surveyed students, giving them a choice of a wide range of outdoor activities and asking them what they’d participate in given the opportunity, what they’d really like to learn, and which they absolutely have to learn how to do.

Nathan Rector head of outdoor education Woodstock School

"We’re looking to deconstruct the Outdoor Education programme at Woodstock, which is already exceptional, and take it to something that’s truly world
class." Head of Outdoor Education, Nathan Rector

The results showed that students are most interested in activities that involve large mammal care, like elephants and camels, technical skills to get them further into the back country such as rock climbing and mountaineering, and high adrenaline activities such as paragliding and sky diving. There was also considerable interest in mountain biking.

Head of Outdoor Education, Nathan Rector, said, “We’re looking to deconstruct the Outdoor Education programme at Woodstock, which is already exceptional, and take it to something that’s truly world class. We wanted to get our student’s input into how they’d like to see the programme develop, and would would excite and engage them. It’s really encouraging to see such enthusiasm from our students for a broad range of outdoor activities, especially going into activity week. Their input is very valuable and is a helpful tool in guiding the Outdoor Education curriculum as we develop it.”

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Outdoor Learning

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