Class of 2023 Starts School Year With Highly Anticipated Senior Retreat
Retreats are an important part of the student experience, creating a fun, safe and rewarding passage for students to come together for unique learning opportunities.
The Class of 2023 started the school year with one of the senior class’s most beloved traditions – a three-day visit to Camp Stevens for the annual senior retreat.
Retreats are an important, highly anticipated part of the student experience. They create a fun, safe and rewarding passage for each class to come together in unique opportunities for character education, leadership, teambuilding, personal challenge and reflection, and foster social interaction, friendship and community among the classes and within advisory groups.
Upper School seniors have started the school year with a retreat at Camp Stevens for many years. While many of the traditional favorite activities and opportunities for class bonding were in place, seniors had a little more choice in their adventures this year. Five different activities were set up and seniors could “choose your own adventure” alongside many of their peers.
The choices included:
- Ropes Course: A traditional favorite at senior retreat, seniors had the option of taking on a ropes course that offered individual and team challenges.
- All About the Dough: A food-based opportunity where students learned about baking. The day included preparing and baking bread, and a trip to a Julian pie bakery to see how the famous Julian pies are made.
- Farm to Table: Students visited the Camp Stevens greenhouse, learned about composting, met the farm animals, harvested food and tried new things.
- Julian history: Students were able to explore and learn more about the history of Julian, including exploring local gold mines.
- Hiking: Students hiked to the top of Vulcan Mountain and had lunch at the top.
Afterwards, each of the five groups reflected on the adventure they chose, discussing what they learned and what challenged them.
Many of the other anticipated senior retreat highlights were back, as students enjoyed campfires, sang songs, prepared s’mores, and enjoyed downtime to hang out with classmates and bond before their final year at St. Margaret’s begins.
Grade-level retreats at St. Margaret’s start in grade 5 and each grade does different activities designed to build friendship, community and skills in a fun, outdoor setting. Grade 5 will have their retreat in late September, while Middle School students have single-day retreats starting this week.
St. Margaret’s Episcopal School
Translation? ¿Traducción? 翻译?: