A World to Explore: Keystone Students Make Outdoors as Their Classroom
Keystone Academy students have recently headed outside their classrooms to learn from nature. They went on Outdoor Education Program (OEP) trips in mid-September not only to camp out and take a break but to experience the beauty of nature and develop their interpersonal skills.
The OEP, or the three-day-two-night camping and hiking trips every year in September, is an important part of Keystone’s experiential learning curriculum. These excursions have become a tradition where students go to different locations within Beijing and nearby cities to learn from the great outdoors.
This year’s OEP trips were much awaited by students, as these were the first outings they had had with classmates and teachers since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic. As such, the students enjoyed the positive energy that nature brought to them.
Realizing Potentials
Tianze Liu was among the eighth graders who first reached the high road of their eight-kilometer trekking path. They had been walking for more than an hour under the autumn sun on a narrow trail with sharp bushes on both sides. Despite that, the fully energized Tianze scouted the path and observed its surroundings: the birds flying across the bright blue sky and even a rugged section of the Great Wall between a steep valley. The amazing sight, not the trek, made him breathless and gave him a sense of achievement.
“When you stand on the top of the mountain, all other problems seem small,” Tianze said. “This makes me feel that no matter what difficulties we encounter in school, our problems are just a tiny part of life—look, there’s a bigger and wider world waiting for us.”
It had been a long time since Tianze and many other Keystone students went hiking with classmates and teachers. They left the familiar confines of the classroom and let themselves be enveloped by nature. They needed no gadgets or books; only two liters of drinking water and packed lunch in their bags, and they were good to go. Hiking was a central part of the OEP trips in which classes from Grade 4 to Grade 10 participated, alongside special activities according to their grade levels.
Further down the road, the young climbers moved slowly since the path accommodated only one person. Claire Yan, who was in the middle of the group, realized she and her classmates needed to pace themselves and know that not everyone could hike quickly. Claire and her friends who had reached the top cheered the other trekkers. Not long after, the eighth-grade trekkers set up camp and called it a day.
Over the side of the fourth graders, who camped out in Yanqing District, some students followed their teachers and guides to look for small insects. After walking for a while, the campers returned to their tents and turned off flashlights, only to be wowed by the starry autumn sky that illuminated their campsite. As the students went quiet, the sound of cicadas chirping and frogs croaking covered the area. At this moment, nature lulled the weary campers to sleep. For Keystone counselor Bella Li, that experience allowed students to take the beauty of nature in and enjoy a much-deserved downtime.
On the following day, the trekkers put on helmets and set off on a short biking course. However, not everyone knew how to bike. Mingzhu Yao Ma had never biked before, so she could choose to silently watch her classmates encircle the course or take a ride herself. Although some bikes had side wheels for beginners, Mingzhu chose a regular bike and tried it with the help of a teacher. An hour later, she was on the course with her classmates. Ms. Li, who had been silently following Mingzhu, took a picture of the student while riding in front of a scenic mountain view. That photo recorded a great step that Mingzhu had made on that day.
“Our head teacher told us that growth is the potential that has yet to be activated,” Mingzhu said, adding that she cried the previous night because of homesickness. But then, she propped herself up for their excursion. “Just because I couldn’t ride a bike before doesn’t mean I cannot do it. Look, I did it today!” Not only she learned how to bike; she actually rode it to finish a 13-kilometer course!
Ms. Li said she was moved by the progress of Mingzhu and all the other students she accompanied. “Sometimes, education is a means to accompany children to grow up. We don’t have to force the outcomes because children will get their rhythms and find their ways to success,” she added.
Group Dynamics
Some groups of young travelers built small settlements somewhere within the dense forest at the foot of Mount Shimen in Huairou District. One of the groups called their encampment the Kingdom of Malu, after the mǎlù (马陆) or the millipedes crawling in the area, which they rarely saw in the city.
Keystone sixth graders camped out there to build their tribes and experience a way of living without the comforts of city life. Understandably, the campers struggled to make do with their little provisions, but their ingenuity came to full play when they began constructing their small bases. Yiqian Hu, for example, was in charge of putting signs on their base walls. Using his prior knowledge of how ancient people made pigments for cave murals, Yiqian ground the leftover charcoal from the bonfire and mixed it with water to create black ink.
Teachers and camp instructors guided students to use knives and saws to make bamboo poles as foundations for their tents. But that’s it; campers needed to find out how to construct the tents themselves. Some, like Zongyi Ji, turned to the math lessons on forms and figures and made a triangular structure held fast by ropes. After a half day of hard work, several tribes successfully erected canopies and made benches. Some students linked bamboo poles to build a table, while others made a swing.
Camp instructors specially set up the shortage of tools to encourage students to solve a problem. Math teacher Ashley Qiu was moved after seeing how students applied classroom learning and worked together “like a colony of ants”. Beyond that, students learned that building such communities did comprise not only a material aspect but also a social and psychological factor. The activity prompted them to look at how they collaborated within a group and their personal qualities that their teammates could tap on to make their tribes fully work. Some tribes elected a leader; others appointed guards and diplomats.
“We found out that cooperation is very important while being in a tribe,” Zixing Wang shared. “For example, if you want to make a chair, someone must support it. Otherwise, it will collapse. Our tribes also visited other camps to learn how they operated. We learned from them too. So, in this setting, we feel like everyone needs each other more.”
The students also understood the value of communication, mutual respect, and understanding. It became more apparent when they faced disagreements in building their own tribes. Wushu teacher Jim Mao, one of the campsite's guides, noted how students became better at dealing with issues during the activity.
“Students can somehow temporarily escape disagreements happening in school when they go home. But in this campsite, they stay together as a team and can only rely on themselves to find solutions and deal with conflict.”
In the afternoon, members of the Kingdom of Malu convened in a tribal meeting and planned their following tasks. One of the members suggested making a musical instrument out of bamboo poles and rope. Director of Experiential Learning Chris Cartwright loved how tribes like Malu went out of their way from building just a settlement to exploring other ways to enjoy their camping. He noticed how everyone was in character to create a new world from their imagination but remained in touch with their values.
“What students are learning here is unstructured play. They’re allowed to develop their own rules, their own sort of boundaries,” Mr. Cartwright added. “And this is a really important factor that our kids need to be able to do. It’s not a classroom, it’s not summatives, it’s not formatives. There’s no right, there’s no wrong.”
Up for the Challenge
Ziyi Chai’s heart pounded intensely as she stood on a wooden board ten meters above the ground. From this vantage point, she could see the expanse of the mountainside against the seemingly endless blue sky. When she looked down, the grasses and bushes enveloped her vision. She could definitely feel the thrill, and despite being strapped in a harness, Ziyi still trembled because a wrong move could make her fall.
Ziyi participated in the Jungle Flight challenge, or basically a zip line that could be accessed first by passing through a series of challenges, including walking on thin planks perched on a low cliff. The challenge was among the new additions to this year’s OEP trips for eighth and ninth graders. Other levels joined a low-altitude rope challenge (for Grades 4-5) and rock climbing (for Grade 5). These activities were meant to encourage students to muster up the courage to face their fears.
“When you stand on the ground and look at others doing the Jungle Flight, it doesn’t feel terrifying at all,” Ziyi said. “But the feeling is completely different when you’re at it!” She successfully finished all other obstacles, and so when she reached the zip line course, everything for her felt smooth.
Tenth graders faced an even harder course: the Challenge by Choice, which happened on a 12-meter-high platform connected by planks, metal rods, and ropes. Students needed to climb a rope, jump across a platform, grab a bar, and then swing down. The entire course looked overwhelming, even for onlookers and challengers on the ground. One of them, Jack Wang, felt intimidated by the course when he saw it upon arriving at the site the day before. But when he was above the platform, the adrenaline rush took him over.
“I knew that my fear of heights was psychological. During the camp, our teacher Majkel Popovic and I talked a lot. He told me about his fear of heights, so we encouraged each other to work hard to overcome this fear,” Jack shared. He also noticed that this year’s OEP trip for Grade 10 students was much more complex than what they had in 2021. Upon reflecting, Jack felt the challenge made sense because it focused more on training their self-discipline, which they would need even more now as they prepare for the Diploma Programme.
The challenges included in the OEP trips centered not only on pushing students to their physical limits but also learning new skills. For example, fourth and fifth graders tried out cooking in a fire that they learned to create. Eighth graders went a bit further and attempted to make tofu with their simple ingredients.
“This camping helped us understand human history in a nutshell,” Claire Yan said. “We temporarily set aside our problems to feel the power of nature and see the wisdom of our ancestors. Also, we cannot judge a civilization by our standards. Rather, we have to see and appreciate how far-reaching their influence is on our current lives.”
It has long been thought by educational scholars that learning happens not only within the confines of the classroom but also in the wide expanse of the world. As such, the creativity and imagination of students run wild when they have experiences and moments with nature.
Keystone Executive Head of School Dr. Emily McCarren emphasizes the importance of experiential learning, not only as part of the school’s curriculum and founding vision, but also the value it holds to developing students. “[We have to let] kids out in the world adventuring, learning how to appreciate nature, learning how to challenge their limits, and learning how to collaborate in really authentic spaces.”
“These experiences are critical for our students because, as beautiful as our learning spaces on campus are, they are insufficient for the lofty learning outcomes we aspire for our students,” she adds. From these trips, “they will remember their incredible reserves of power and strength that they might not have known they had. They will remember that they are part of something bigger than themselves, part of a school and a community that knows the value of time spent in nature. They will find ways to protect the beautiful spaces that showed them beauty and brought them joy. The outcomes of these trips are broad and deep: learning that will endure and be transferred to the challenges to come, long after the trips are over.”
