On the 11th November, both Miss Lava and Miss Ring took part in the Nuclear fallout in order to inspire the Duke of Edinburgh (D of E) pupils to challenge themselves as part of the idea being “if we can, you can!”.
Both Miss Lava and Miss Ring decided to run a 7k mud run with over 50 challenging obstacles, including mud pits, tyre walls, a lake, zip line, and many more.
Miss Ring, D of E leader, stated “the most challenging aspect was the cold, losing all feeling in your fingers and toes as you were in and out of almost freezing water and covered in mud”.
She also commented “As teachers, it is incredibly important to ensure that students can see you being challenged, in order to hopefully encourage them to push themselves to complete something like D of E, which they initially might deem too hard or impossible. With the Nuclear Fallout run, we hope we have done just that for our next groups on D of E”.
When the students were asked about their D of E experience so far, Daniel Joo (Year 11) stated “We were told plenty of times that the D of E expedition will be an exceptional challenge, both physically and mentally, so it was only natural for me to be nervous about the two days and one night that separated us from the home straight to the Bronze award”.
He also mentioned “I, for one, have never been camping nor used a compass and a map correctly, so it’s fair to say that both the practice and the final expeditions were going to be immense learning curves, not just for me but for all of us in the group. That turned out to be correct, but I have never thought that such a steep learning curve would be so much fun to get through!”.
“Of course, DofE was more than just an expedition; it was a chance for me to learn new skills, improve myself physically and mentally and of course, it was a chance to get a coveted award while having tremendous fun!”