No news is good news

I've mentioned before that sometimes not hearing anything is the best possible situation. Although it's difficult to be here on campus, or far away at home and not know what is going on this is actually a very good situation.

The weather is good, the instructor teams are strong and students are well in the groove by day three!

To help you pass the time I thought I would post one of the activities the groups will do during the trip. We build a day into every route that has a short amount of miles. That gives groups a chance to rest and also be more reflective. This activity is perfect for that kind of day:

Letter to Self
The things we think about, experience and realize about ourselves and others on course can be powerful. Sometimes as we return to our everyday lives we can forget these lessons as we slip back into familiar patterns and roles. The goal of this activity is to have students create a tangible reminder of expedition that will come back to them in the future.

Warm up
Ask students to reflect on what they have experienced, thought about and maybe realized about themselves and others during the expedition. Was the program different than they expected? Did they experience things they didn’t expect?

Let students know they will have the opportunity to create a time capsule. They will be writing a letter that will incorporate these reflections as well as anything else they would like to record. We will deliver their letter back to them in the future so they may be reminded of this experience and time in their life.

Activity
Distribute paper and envelopes. Provide some time to write, perhaps in conjunction with the SOLO activity. When students are done they should seal their letter and address it to themselves at their home address.

Encourage students to capture reflections, learning or advice to their future selves. The more students can enter into this activity the more meaningful it can be. There is nothing worse than getting a letter from the past that doesn’t contain anything interesting and wishing you had taken it more seriously.

Cool Down
If students would like they may share something about what they wrote or what the experience was like for them.

Tell students we’ll be saving the letters and sending them back to them at some point in the future.

At the end of course we collect these letters and hold onto them for three years before we mail them back to students during their first year of college.