This month, the teens have taken over the PATH (hence it being a couple of days later than usual). The adolescent students of Montessori Adolescent School of Hamilton have written the articles this month, all about their recent eco-odyssey to Baja, Mexico. Enjoy.
Tony Evans
Director of Schools
Dundas Valley Montessori School
Montessori Adolescent School of Hamilton
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"You're doing what?!?"
When people hear we, as Adolescent Guides, choose to spend three weeks of our school year away with a dozen adolescents the responses we get fall into two categories. The first, and frankly the larger group of responses, are generally of shock that anyone would want to spend that extended amount of time, in close quarters, with a group of teenagers.
The other response is that, given the places we go and the experiences we participate in, it must be a paid vacation. What's funny is that the truth about our Odysseys lies somewhere between these two opposite misperceptions.
Odyssey trips aren't vacations for the students or the adolescent guides, but they are an essential enrichment of the life in an adolescent community. Named after Homer's poem, "The Odyssey," in which Odysseus faces an epic journey home, our trips are also planned to be epic. Our travels put our students into unfamiliar settings in which they can challenge themselves, gain real-world experience of the theory studied in the classroom, share amazing experiences, and develop lifelong memories with the classmates they've had since Casa.
Since the establishment of the Montessori Adolescent School of Hamilton, in 2011, we have studied geography and history and tested mental and physical fortitude by canoeing the Grand River and backpacking in Algonquin Park; we've immersed ourselves in Franco-Canadian culture visiting Montreal and Quebec City, but no Odyssey has taken us farther afield, asked so much of our students, and yielded greatest rewards than our recent tirp to Baja California, Mexico.
Working with Ecology Project International, our students had the opportunity to study ecology and participate in scientific research in one of the most biodiverse and
ecologically significant regions of the world, The Sea of Cortez. What follows are some of our students' impressions of what our latest Odyssey was about. As adolescent Guides, perhaps the easiest way to sum up what we feel was accomplished on this Odyssey is to tell you what one of our Seventh Year boys said to his mother after returning from Mexico: "I feel so grown up." That's why we do it.
Please enjoy experiencing our Baja Ecology Odyssey, through our students' eyes.
Emily Dowell
Adolescent Guide
Montessori Adolescent School of Hamilton