Prep students showcase the real-world skills they’ve learned during Expeditions

By Micah Tam

Staff Writer

On May 25, Summit Preparatory Charter High School had a Celebration of Learning in which students got the chance to exhibit the life skills they acquired during Expeditions. Among the selection of Expedition courses that offer different learning opportunities from content knowledge to the arts, there are also courses that teach life skills that benefit students outside of school.

Fitness

For the last two rounds of Expeditions, students had the chance to go to the Riekes Center in Redwood City where they were able to workout, play basketball, learn yoga, play instruments and explore unknown talents. While learning these different skills and hobbies, they were taught by specialized coaches who work at the Riekes Center to help and support the students. Two lead Riekes Center coaches attended the Celebration of Learning hosted at Summit Prep.

*Lead coaches Gabriel Risk Martin and Alex Booher show a video explaining what they did at the Riekes Center.*

Wilderness

Melissa Bernstein, who teaches the Wilderness Expeditions course, said she wants students to learn “how to take care of yourself and how to be healthy, so if any of the kids have an interest in going backpacking, they’ll know how to take care of issues by themselves.” She said the course was a “good intro for them, but we could really use more time for them to really get comfortable with the system,” explaining “the only problem is that we were rushing. The class that I was teaching them is actually 80 hours of course material, and we didn’t have 80 hours, so in order to get a really complete practice it would take longer than the time that we have in Expeditions.”

For the Celebration of Learning, each group had to make a video on a certain wilderness injury. “Our group is doing wounds and cuts, like operations and stuff like that, so we have to make a video on how to treat it,” Summit Prep freshman Tara DuBridge said. “It’s important to know how to treat these kinds of injuries ‘cause it could happen anytime, and so it’s important to be prepared.” She added that the project was challenging. “It was pretty hard to remember the steps that you had to do because it’s a pretty long process, and so it was hard to memorize it and do the video.”

Summit Prep freshman Tara DuBridge worked with her group to make this video about treating wounds and cuts in the wilderness.

Summit Prep freshman Ethan Sheppy and his group did their project on shoulder and finger dislocations. “This is a very helpful skill ‘cause if you’re out hiking and your friend injures himself really bad, you have to know how to help them,” he said, adding, “I liked this Expedition, it was very enjoyable.” To view his group’s video, click this link.

The audience watches wilderness first-aid videos during Celebration of Learning.

Food For Thought

Food for Thought is a new Expeditions class this school year, and it has gotten great responses from students enrolled. Shaan Johal, a freshman at Summit Prep, recommends that everyone take this class because it provides good information to benefit your health.

Summit Prep freshman Casper Lyback explained that their Celebration of Learning project was to film a video about a certain dish and how to make it. “This project is also about showing creativity,” he said, adding that the class allowed the students to express themselves through food. The final project was “quite interesting and the end product was quite delicious.”

Brooke Hein, who teaches Food for Thought, explained that food affects everyone. “Young people need to analyze what they put in their body, and we need to encourage them to think critically about what they eat.”

Each class voted for a winning video. Here is the link for the winner in the morning class. Here is the link for the winner in the afternoon class.