The Trip

So the big question is “What am I going to do?” So far, I have joined a Creativity Week group with two teachers, Stephen Vrla and Lee Bryant. Today we had our first meeting with all of the group members who are going to participate in the trip. There are about twenty students in total, and Stephen, Lee, and I gave them an overview of what we are going to be doing throughout the trip. Stephen is going to teach environmental ethics, and Lee is going to teach art; I’m going to teach the basics of camping and leadership to the students.

The location of the trip will be at Lake Houston. We will spend one night on campus to get everyone comfortable with camping, and spend the next two nights at Lake Houston. On the last day, Thursday, we will come back to campus for the all-school presentation and during this day we will present our Creativity Week project to the whole school.

Currently, everything is working out well. All we need to do is prepare for the trip by gathering the equipment, food, and other things needed for the trip. I still have to prepare my part of the project by creating my agenda and the activities I will make the group participate in, but the preparation is going smoothly. So to answer the question asked above, this is what I’m going to do.

Experts Wanted

I want to ask if there is anyone who is willing to help me out with my project. I don't want to make it seem as though no one is helping me, because I do have people helping me with my project, but it would be nice to have a wider range of people who could help me. It will be great if someone with a better knowledge of outdoor leadership can help me out and give me a better insight on my project.

Survey?

I'm thinking of asking students at my school what is the most important qualities a leader should have. I want to do this so I can have an idea of what others think about leadership and compare their responses. This will help by being a base on which I can work on.

My Reflection

My Students’ Sentence: “He made me confident about the outdoors”.

This is what I want the students to conclude after the camping trip. I want each student to gain enough knowledge and skills to lead their own expedition in the outdoors.

Was I better today than I was Yesterday?

In August, I didn’t have a clue of what I wanted to do. I had different ideas, but none of them seem to express my passion. I was walking through a foggy open field. I didn’t know where I was going with my project and fell behind everyone else. I became tired of walking through this field, and decided to find a way out. I began to think of my passions; I began to think of something I would love to share with others.

I started to ruminate about my past camping experiences, and realized all of the challenges and fun I experienced. This was when I realized that I could share my experience and knowledge with others. This idea was just the thing I was looking for.

I concluded that I was going to lead a camping group in which the students will learn basic leadership and survival skills. Currently, I’m in the process of gathering information needed to begin this camping trip, but I’m a mile stone ahead than I was in August.

Where? Where? Where!

I have talked to Stephen Verla about where I could make my project happen. At first I picked a location that was a long drive from the school, but Stephen reminded me that I should pick somewhere closer because Creativity Week starts on Monday and ends on Thursday. During the past three years, Creativity Week has been from Monday to Friday, which means that I have one less day to make my project happen. This means that I have to work around this obstacle and now plan on picking a closer place.

Stephen and I looked at a few websites where we could find a closer location with an interesting terrain, and we found this website, Texas State Park Guide, that has a highlighted area of Texas with information of Parks in that area. He said that he would be okay to take the group and me anywhere in that area. Now that I have the location narrowed down, I’m one step closer to making it happen.

If any of you have any comments or suggestions, please post them below.

Where do I Go?

Before my project could be “Okayed” by the administration, I would need to give them a plan of when and where this camping trip is going to happen.

I asked one of my teachers at school, Stephen Verla, if he would be willing to help me out with my project, and he said yes. I told him that I wouldn’t want to plan the trip on a weekend because it wasn’t enough time, and it might be better to have the trip during creativity week. There will be much more time during this week, and none of the students will be worried about school related stuff. Stephen agreed that creativity week would be a good time to have the trip, but he wasn’t certain what he was going to do during that week. He said that he was open to student’s ideas for that week, but he would help me out if I got all of the details together.

I was glad after talking with Stephen because I felt assured that my project might actually happen. Now that I have an idea of when this was going to happen, I now needed to know where I would have this camping trip. Stephen recommended somewhere with a mountainous landscape, but the area that I can think of with a mountainous landscape is west Texas. I’ve heard that Big Bend National Park is a beautiful place to go camping, but I don’t know if it would be considered too far from the school’s location; I don’t want to the exhaust the driver.

If anyone can help me out with picking out a location, please comment below.

My Site

I didn’t mention this earlier, but I’m also creating a website, using WIX, about my Senior Project. This website is still being worked on, so you might have some difficulty trying to navigate through it. As I get all of the details for my project together, I will post the updates on my blog and this website.

If you have any comments or questions, please post them below. Also, if you have any tips on how to improve my website, please post them.

Here is the link: http://www.wix.com/juarez17richard/richard_17