Craig McIntosh, Jamie Welwood and their students have the biggest classroom around. There are no walls, no ceiling and no textbooks – only the wilderness and good company.
The pair are teachers with the Flin Flon School Division’s outdoor education program, which brings students to a base camp located east of the city.
The camp is a short snowshoe trek away from Highway 10. A teepee with a fire pit inside awaits any visitors, along with some lean-tos and a quinzee, still under construction with several sticks poking out of it.
McIntosh explains that the sticks are an important part of the construction process, keeping the walls and roof of the quinzee a consistent width.
“When you hit a stick, stop digging and go to another spot,” he said.
McIntosh, a teacher at École McIsaac School, has been teaching outdoor education in Flin Flon since 1998, inspired by outdoor teachings from educators like John Clark, Clarence Pettersen, John Belfry and Gerry Clark.
“The first thing is they get outside. Nature deficit disorder is a big issue, so just getting them out and getting them off their computers and their phones is the first thing – everything else is a bonus,” he said.
Since he began teaching the course at Many Faces Educational Centre, McIntosh has not only taught his students, but learned from them as well.
“It’s funny. At Many Faces, when I taught this, I had students who were teaching me stuff. They were coming in from Pukatawagan and other places and they knew how to trap and how to set snares. I learned a lot from students,” said McIntosh.
McIntosh said the biggest lesson he wants to teach is basic outdoor survival skills.
“With these guys, I think the biggest thing for them is simple things – how to dress properly for the outdoors, how to layer up, how to make a fire. When they first came up, they first just grabbed a bunch of sticks and tried to light them. They figured out how to make a fire, things like that. There’s cooperation – you can’t have just one person doing all the work.”
The course has become an important part of school for students who want to learn about the outdoors or who don’t learn best in a typical classroom environment.
“They have different attitudes when they come out here from school. When they come out here, it sort of changes them,” said McIntosh.
“This program has really been a game changer for them,” agreed Jamie Welwood, Ruth Betts Community School outdoor education teacher.
“We incorporate coming out here a lot. In the school, sometimes they run into some issues with getting into trouble. Out here, it’s night and day.”
The students are eager to get to the base camp, which they do as many as three times a week. It’s rare to see students as excited for a class as these students are – they come into the supply room at Ruth Betts bounding and ready to grab their snowshoes and head out.
“I learned to follow your tracks and about snowshoeing,” said Ruth Betts student Jacob Dumas.
“It’s harder than it looks.”
“We’ve learned how to survive in the wilderness alone,” said Ruth Betts student Joel Fidler.
“These two are always outside,” said Welwood, pointing at Fidler and his friend Jordan Sevold.
“Hopefully in the spring we’ll do a nice little canoe trip, eh?”
The students were excited.
Welwood, a recent transplant to Flin Flon from Ontario, hasn’t heard of a similar program anywhere. He believes the program has already had a benefit for the kids.
“I don’t think you’re going to find a similar kind of program anywhere else. Seeing the kids and how they behave from the beginning of the year already, it’s already paying dividends in my mind,” he said.
