By JAN LARSON McLAUGHLIN
BG Independent News
Bowling Green Superintendent Francis Scruci broke the bad news at Tuesday’s school board meeting. For the second year in a row, Bowling Green fifth graders will miss out on a week-long camp at Heartland Outdoor School.
Due to COVID-19, Heartland is limiting the number of overnight campers to 80. Bowling Green usually sends all its fifth graders together. This change would require the district to reserve three weeks – and no additional weeks are available at the camp, Scruci said. The day camp is not an option because of the long drive time from Bowling Green.
“It’s unfortunate the pandemic has robbed” two consecutive fifth grade classes of the camp experience, Scruci said.
To help compensate for that loss, the district will again do its best to recreate some of the lessons learned at camp. But it won’t be the same.
When fifth graders returned from camp in 2017, teachers presented a program to the school board about the impact the camp has on children.
For one week, the fifth graders left behind their classrooms, their parents, their cell phones. But they found nature, social skills and how to learn without being tied to technology.
The best explanations perhaps came from the students themselves, who wrote letters to people in the community who helped pay for the week-long learning adventure.
“I learned that fear was just a word,” one student wrote after reaching the peak of the rock wall.
Another student talked about the different environments they observed and the different types of rocks they studied. “We learned so much, I could fill the whole page,” the child wrote.
And another told of learning how to tell the difference between healthy and unhealthy streams, how to shoot arrows, make candles and throw a tomahawk.
Where else can they have hands-on learning about crawdads in the creek, food chains, and adaptation of animals.
And where better to learn about the skills that settlers needed to survive in Ohio, from camp staff who re-enact those roles.
On the bus ride back to Bowling Green at the end of camp, one student exclaimed, “I survived the whole week without technology.”
They also learned about working as a team to accomplish tasks. That lesson can be difficult for students who are accustomed to working by themselves, depending on technology instead of other humans.
This past school year, the school district teamed up with the Bowling Green Parks and Recreation Department to ease the let down of fifth grade camp lost due to COVID-19.
Each elementary held a one-day camp. The students learned about pond life, group problem solving, competed in relay races, and much more. It wasn’t the same as Heartland – but it did get the students outdoors learning.
