This year has had more than a healthy smattering of highlights; however, this last week took the cake. I had the unforgettable pleasure of chaperoning half of OakRun's sixth-grade class to TBarM: an adventurous kid's outdoor wonderland tucked away out highway 46 in the Texas hill country. This place has more than a few special places in my childhood memories and it was a blast seeing my students enjoy physical exertion beyond what is required to move the thumbsticks on an XBox control.
TBarM has much to offer the adventurous who don't mind moderate altitudes and stomach-dropping free-falls: highly elevated ropes courses, ridiculously huge cable swings (fittingly dubbed the Screamer and Bushwacker), a precipitous platform atop a telephone pole (the Leap of Faith), a zip line as long as a football field, and acres upon acres of give-me-a-break-from-that-classroom-please!
Of course, the highlight for the kids had to be seeing Mr. Davis' 6'5" lankiness flailing through the air. From the Bushwacker to the Leap of Faith, I took every opportunity to revisit my childhood by doing things that would make walking normal a notable challenge in the days to come. One student was so eager to see me attempt the Leap of Faith that she offered me a dollar in change if I would grant her this one wish. Of course, I consented and within minutes, I was accompanied by a band of students down the trail to the dreaded Leap of Faith.
At first, it didn't look like much: a retired telephone pole equipped with iron pegs driven into it's sides to serve as one's only method for climbing to the top. There, 50-ish feet up in the gusty hill country air sat a pitiful excuse for a platform: a 2 sq. ft. plank of wood that gave very little confidence to the one entrusting his life to it. Eight feet out from the precarious pole, swaying in the breeze, hung a trapeze bar 50 feet directly above . . . rock-hard ground. The objective was obvious: 1) Climb. 2) Situate yourself atop the swaying and aged telephone pole. 3) Pray that the girl on the ground holding the other end of the rope attached to your diaper-esque harness is heavier than she looks and had training somewhere other than the girlscouts. 4) Thank God that there are many worse ways to die. 5) Gain courage from the students chanting your name far below (or were they secretly wanting to see their pre-algebra teacher spattered all over the rocky terrain below?) 6) Clench buttocks. 7) Jump as far as your wobbly, nervous knees will permit and, dear God please, grab the trapeze bar.
Would you believe it? I made it. And I conquered every other obstacle the students dared me to attempt. Man, it was a blast; man, it hurt . . . a lot. Didn't know I could hurt there!
Still, after all of this, it was what I learned about my students that made the day invaluable. Qualities of their character and personalities that are otherwise camouflaged in the classroom became blazingly apparent when faced with the challenges of the great outdoors. I saw rough-n-tough football quarterbacks freeze up in terror five feet off the ground while shy, timid 11-year-old girls scaled 40-foot climbing ropes like Spiderman only to leap thoughtlessly from platforms high enough to make me, a grown man, lose my sense of balance. I could only gaze in wonder and amazement at the transformations.
You never truly know your students until you see them in their element and then, SKI-DOOSH!, all of your categories get blown to steamy bits. And you thought you knew so much . . .
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