Norval Skill Building

On Monday October 19, Middle School attended a skill building exercise at Norval. This was a chance to improve friendships and teamwork with all of your peers. You undergo many challenges with the group you are assigned to and try to go out of your comfort zone to meet the expectations. When I woke up that morning, it was cold and rainy outside. I personally was not looking forward to going to Norval. When I got to school I don't think I was the only one who wasn't exited. We then boarded the bus and headed off on our 1 hour ride. When we got there, I got off the bus and realized that it was warm out and the rain was no longer pouring down on me. This definitely put a smile on my face. I was ready to begin the day!

The first thing we did was to split into grades and go to different parts of the campus. Grade eight did something called the Pig Blanket. One person gets in the middle of a large blanket and the rest stay on the perimeter of the blanket holding onto handles. When the person is ready, he lies down and everyone on the outside pulls as hard as they can on the handle. Then the person in the middle gets launched high into the air. It was a lot of fun and I got quite high.

 Then we split into random groups and went to do some activities. My group's first activity was to climb a 12 foot wall with absolutely no assistance. This was the biggest challenge of the whole day and we only had 30 minutes to do it! We spent about 15 minutes making a plan which was to get two people to boost up one person while everyone else spotted. The person would reach up and the person at the top would pull you up. You may be wondering how a person would get to the top to begin with. Well lets just say my group is VERY lucky to have Willem on our team. He just ran up the wall using nothing but a small boost.

 After, we headed to a challenge where there was one person harnessed and floating just shy of the ground. Using four pulleys that were attached to the person, my group pulled the pulleys in certain directions to gather up four balls. I was lucky enough to go in the harness once. This exercise was a lot easier than getting over the 12 foot wall. In between these activities, we also had a snack consisting of a juice box and a granola bar. Then we formed a circle and rolled a dice that had different questions on it and answered them together. There were some pretty interesting things said about people going out of their comfort zones. We ate lunch outside after the activities were over.

 Then we went inside and made something called a drum circle. Everyone gets in a circle and has a drum and we unite as one through music. It was really cool and we learned somewhat how to play the bongo drum. The drums were all hand carved and were interesting. We did the drum circle for what seemed like a really short time but it wasn't. You know how time can fly when your having fun. After, we said good bye and thank you for everything and got onto our bus to head back to the school. It was a great but tiring day of fun.

I think Norval was a challenging, fun way to discover and improve team building skills by being active yet still educational. Personally, it was an overall great experience. I think it improved the way I look at situations, for example, on my sports teams. For others, it may have improved situations that involves their hobby or passion. I hope others enjoyed it as much as I did.

Brendan