Students new to George School spent last Sunday afternoon immersed in outdoor activities designed to help them build trust and get to know each other better outside of the classroom. The Outdoor Challenge has been a fixture of students' first weeks at George School for almost forty years. Originally a product of the adventure-based learning movement, Outdoor Challenge is one component of the Essentials of a Friends Community course required for all freshmen and new sophomores. This course provides an experiential learning process that helps introduce students to life at George School, and gives them a practical orientation to living in a Quaker community.

“The Outdoor Challenge is a great learning experience,” said Tom Hoopes ’83 of the Religion Department. “Students get to know another side of each other, through the combination of light-hearted competition and group problem-solving. Outdoor Challenge offers a wonderful complement to classroom work and service learning, by making FUN the most important dimension of the experience."

One of the team exercises is the “Human Ladder,” which requires trust on the part of the climber and coordination on the part of the ladder-holders. Team members pair up and each pair is supplied with a strong wooden dowel, approximately two-feet long. A brave volunteer starts at one end of the human ladder and climbs (horizontally) along the rungs of the ladder, each of which is being held by a pair of classmates. After the climber passes over a rung of the ladder, those team members “leap frog” to the front of the ladder, allowing the climber to continue climbing indefinitely. Once everyone gets the hang of it, it starts to feel easy!

Another activity is the “Trust Circle,” which has students form a tight, standing circle, with each person facing the back of the student in front of her or him. (Think "sardines.") At the signal, everyone bends their knees and slowly sits down onto the lap of the person directly behind them. If anyone loses faith and doesn't let his weight be carried by the person behind him, the circle collapses. But when everyone trusts in the integrity of the group process, the circle holds!

Outdoor Challenge leader Stephanie McBride has been guiding this program for almost twenty years. “We have changed the format a little bit over the years, to keep it fresh. But its pedagogical and philosophical essence remains unchanged,” said Stephanie. “Outdoor Challenge gives students a safe way to show their silly sides, while engaging in the serious work of solving problems with a heterogeneous group. As always happens, kids had a lot of fun and came away feeling safer and more connected to their new community.”