July 23: Jone's Hole to the Take Out

Day 6
"Tenacity in Pursuit". Day 6 was the day that the students were challenged to graduate - not just complete - this course. With a long 22 mile day in front of us through the flat water of Island Park, as well as Whirlpool and Split Mountain canyons. The day began before dawn.

By now the students were old hands when it came to setting up lunch.

While lunch was being prepared, we took a stab at the Kurt Hahn Standing Long Jump contest.

Friendship is an inevitable result of our time on the river together. We hope to see each student make many friends on each trip.

There weren't many pictures taken between lunch and camp because there were so many miles to be made. The day required more tenacity than we anticipated.

On each course, there comes a highly teachable moment when a challenge is set forth and then some members of the team put in extra effort, and some put in minimal effort. This commonly results in frustration, and conflict among the students. This is a rich moment because it is an opportunity to illustrate the power of teamwork, and to teach conflict resolution. For our course, our students performed very highly until dinner. The process of getting camp set up and making dinner after 22 long miles became our course's teachable moment.

After dinner, we restored our sense of team by having the students "own" their contributions to the situation (positive or negative). We then did a few rounds of "CFRs": students stated their concerns, their feelings and their requests to the others. Once the lessons were communicated and the conflicts were aired out - we sure slept well.