In the early stages of this placement, I heard quite a few references to our work being “reactive”, and I wasn’t sure what it meant at the time. In this behind the scenes look at two sessions I recently ran with St Andrews RC Secondary School, I’ll give some insight into what I now think it means….
With just a couple of week’s notice, having secured the funding, we begun a partnership of several months with the school, working with pupils who have finished their education, to help them on to positive destinations. It would involve practical conservation sessions in the grounds of the local primary school, and our very own Employability Award in the Outdoors.
It took until only a couple of days before I was due to deliver Day 1 of the Employability Award in the Outdoors with them, that I discovered the school was not – as I had assumed – in the town of St Andrews, but in the Cranhill/Greenfield area of the East End of Glasgow. A minor but fairly important detail, you may say. The next challenge was that I’d never been to the area, and had no idea where the most suitable area for running the Award would be. I’d looked for nearby green spaces on Google Maps, and asked several staff members at the school (none of whom lived in the area), but what I really needed was a site visit. With it being in a different city, though, driving all the way there just to check that there were enough trees to hang a tarpaulin from, would hardly have been an efficient use of resources. Cue a very early departure on the morning I was due to deliver the Award, and a hurried visit to Cranhill Park to check and risk assess the site, ably assisted by Allison, our Project Scotland volunteer.
The session, you’ll be pleased to hear, went very well. Clad in almost DayGlo orange jackets (courtesy of Network Rail, apparently), the group built shelters, carried out their own risk assessment, and took part in the obligatory blindfold games, one of which brings a literal meaning to the word “treehugger”. They enjoyed themselves, and Allison and I were (I think) slick and professional in our delivery of the Award. Good. Phew…
That was originally going to be my only involvement with the group. The school decided, though, that on reflection, since they were already receiving employability training, that they’d rather we ran several sessions entirely outdoors, focused on “survival skills”, than the Employability Award. Sensing an opportunity to consolidate the skills I’ve learned through my recent Forest School Level 3 leader training, I agreed to return to St Andrew’s (no, definitely not that St Andrews) to run a couple of sessions on fire lighting and tool usage.
Only thing was, Cranhill Park wasn’t really suitable for Forest School-type activities. So… several phonecalls to the local ranger service, and an agreement to use the nearby Hogganfield Loch site (“the Hoggy”, to the locals). Again, I hadn’t been there before, and this time, had no time for a quick pre-session visit. I picked up the group and told them to treat it as an adventure (or something like that). I took frequent glances at the Google maps print-out, and the instructions (from the ranger) I’d written down about where to park, and where to build a fire (“look for a gap in the wall, then a faint path through the brambles”, that sort of thing). Throughout all of this, the skies looked menacingly grey, looking like it might pour with rain any minute. Would the small stash of dry wood I’d brought be enough? Still, at least they had those DayGlo jackets…
But we found the fire site. It only rained a little bit. We built a big fire, and the group loved it. We finished the day by toasting marshmallows, which, after all, is the mark of a successful outdoor session. Again, phew.
I think that’s what “reactive” means.