Afterwards, we had a bonfire. We were sitting in circle and Jack was showing pictures of different butterflies, snakes and birds that we could see in March.
At some point two girls disappeared in the forest. They came back after 40 minutes and they were very upset because Jack didn’t believe them that they were in the cafe. Later on they refused to have their lunch and they didn’t talk to anybody. Jack tried not to get angry and smooth the atmosphere. However, the girls didn’t come back again.
13.03.2014
Our activity for today was planting trees. There was no toilet facilities and people had to use bushes. However Jack did make a safe place in the bushes and he also made sure that everyone felt comfortable of using it.
At the beginning there was an explanation about wildlife and the importance of planting trees. It made you feel that you are doing something very important and when you come back in twenty years’ time you’re going to be proud of yourself.
We were given instructions on how to plant the trees, approximately at the same distance from each other. Mathematics and precision was used with our target to plant 50 trees in 50 metres.
The session involved working in teams. ‘Barbara’ and I dug the holes and planted the trees. ‘Suzy’ measured the distance and put the bamboo sticks to hold the plastic streamers next to the planted trees. The girls showed great team work and communication skills. When the girls were really tired and slowed down I gave them a little bit of encouragement by swapping activities. There was also non-verbal communication, guessing from ours facial expressions when we weren’t happy or unsure about something. We listened to each other and asked questions when something went wrong.
The day also showed that there was a lot of respect for each other and how Jack was monitoring the situation all the time. Alice wasn’t afraid to use the ‘’loo with the view’’ because Jack was making sure that no one followed her; however, not everyone felt that confident. Our group finished tree planting but a leader could have helped with encouragement and the cooperation when task were being shared out. In future I would probably suggest this.
20.03.2014
There was choice of two activities; all the girls decided to plant the seeds and the boys chose wood working. I feel that there was deliberate divide between boys and girls and Jack could have managed better.
Alice found the activity difficult because the seeds were very small and she kept losing them. I helped Alice at the beginning to organise her pots and she stopped losing them. She became quite creative as she decided that instead of planting one kind of seed in each tray she is going to make it more interesting mixing up the rows. I noticed that she gets bored quite quickly, but this time she really got involved.
After lunch we went to play hide and seek in the maze. It was a shared mission to alternate exploring and being discovered. When we got back the girls started to talk to us about their lives and problems. Alice told us about her rivalry with her brother and that he make her so angry sometimes and she smashed things around her and swore at her mother. She asked me about my children and how I manage when they get angry. I assumed that she found it quite easy to talk to me because she knew that I have children and I will understand her. Therefore she started to ask me more private things like periods and sex which I found it quite uncomfortable and I didn’t want to talk about it.
The day’s activities and being away from the boys encouraged the girls to open and show their emotions which was a new experience for me.
23.03.2014
In the woods the girls went with Jack and the boys, Rebecca and myself went with ecologist. We were checking and re-setting Longworth live traps (set for voles, mice & shrews).We learned to identify mice gender, size and the condition. I noticed that two boys were quite bored because the same creatures were in all the traps and they went off and got naughty and the teaching assistant had to calm them down. It might be because one of the boys had just joined the group or the children weren’t used to a new teaching assistant who shouted at them. I also noticed that the new boy was naughty later on.
At lunch the children misbehaved, throwing cookies at each other. Jack had to intervene and told them that respect is mutual, so once they were shown respect, they should respond in the same manner. His strategy worked. I realised that they have formed good relationship with male teaching assistant who was absent at that day.
3.04.2014
On the last day we cooked some food on the bonfire. Part of the group was engaged with cutting and shaping the wood sticks and ‘’Steven’’ and I were in charge of cooking garlic soup. Alice volunteered to make toast, however she was criticized by the boys. I burnt the next lot of toast which might have shown Alice that no one is perfect and it’s acceptable sometimes to make a mistake. They were all then given a knife to shape wood. Jack told them that he trusted them and he believed that they were going to use them sensibly. However, Alice did not want to use the knife she wanted to cut the bushes and she asked me if I would go with her. Alice asked me if I could sing for her but I felt embarrassed and I didn’t know what to sing and I refused. However I asked her to sing for me but she say she will only sing if I sing for her. I sang ‘Lala’ because I didn’t have anything else in my mind at that moment and later on she was singing too. I pointed out a bird for her (robin) and later on she was pointing it to other girls and Jack was quite impressed. For some reason she wanted to stay away from the group that day. It could be because they had knives or she was afraid of using them herself or maybe she wanted to spend some time with me cutting the bushes. I insisted that we should go and see what the rest of the group were doing but she wasn’t interested so I went on my own and she didn’t mind it. She was proud of herself at the end because she managed to cut a way through the bushes. I learned today that some people needed more attention than the others to feel a lot better about themselves and can achieve more.
Today I observed that the girls started to recognise the wildlife around them.
by
rose_roza (student)
