Throughout my experiences within the Outdoor Education course I have gained many skills and great amounts of knowledge about the outdoors as well as met many different and interesting people. The seminars people have run have provided me with significant amounts of knowledge on subjects ranging from extreme sports to crossing a river safely. Participating in my own seminar also allowed me to study what clothing would be most suitable for different outdoor climates and provided me with opportunities to work on my communication skills and general portrayal of information across to an audience. This has provided me with feedback and experiences to reflect upon my strengths and weaknesses when addressing and teaching a group of people. Generally I felt my seminar was fairly successful, as was my initiative games activities. For the initiative games we (myself and Nat) wanted to keep them fairly inclusive, fun and different. We incorporated balloons into one of our initiative games (because let’s face it everyone loves balloons) and worked on getting people working in teams and developing their team work abilities, as these are extremely important both in the classroom in the area of PDHPE and when in the outdoors. It was somewhat disappointing that I did not get to experience the challenging hike and overnight camp due to prior commitments and extreme weather conditions, however I have had ample experiences within the outdoors, as is shown within my other entries, to be able to confidently say that I value and enjoy activities in the outdoors. The course was interesting, informative and fun and allowed us to work with and enjoy the company of people from a range of different backgrounds. The initiative games especially provided us with the opportunity to get to know each other on a deeper level, form trust, and work productively as a team. It also gave us plenty of ideas as future educators, of activities and games we can use to build and improve classroom relationships, as well as encourage a positive, inclusive classroom dynamic.

I have great ambitions to have a career in outdoor education and work with children from a range of different backgrounds in developing skills, attitudes, relationships and positive memories. This course has really fostered my needs and interest within this area and has furthermore supported and reiterated my passion for the outdoors.