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ARVIAT
A group of students and teachers from John Arnalukjuak High School in Arviat spent three days and two nights on the land as part of a first attempt at a grad leadership retreat earlier this month.

Elder Julia Pingushat helps judge the bannock cookoff during a grad retreat on the land near Arviat earlier this month. - photo courtesy of Gord Billard

A total of about 40 people took part in the retreat, including students, four teachers, cooks, elders and special guests.

High school principal Jay Thomas said the program exceeded expectations and he hopes it will continue in future years.

He said the retreat focused on potential Grade 12 graduates for 2012, and helped build leadership and team-building skills among the student participants.

"I really didn't know what to expect because this was the first time we did a retreat like this at our school, but it just blew my mind it was that successful," said Thomas.

"This is our third year having potential grad groups with a teacher advisor, but the first where we took them out on the land for an opportunity to build on the team concept and cohesiveness of a class of grads together.

"The feedback I've received from the participants has been very positive.

"A buzz about the trip was even created among students in grades 9 through 11 by word of mouth, so I'm extremely pleased

with the impact it's had."

Thomas said the initiative was funded through the school budget.

He said the decision to allocate money for a project such as the leadership retreat is made at the local school level.

"The whole purpose of starting the grad advisor groups was to have a dedicated person at the school for each potential grad other than classroom teachers, myself, the vice-principal or guidance counsellor.

"That way, if they need an extra fire lit under them, for example, they have somebody who is looking out for them and there to deal with any issues that will help bring them across the graduation line.

"The whole concept of taking them out on the land was to bring that sense of team building to the next level."

Thomas said the land activities were identified by a group of four Grade 12 students who co-ordinate the school's student land trips.

He said the students work on planning the land trips with a teacher facilitator.

"They represent the student voice and help guide the teacher planning committee, so having them part of the planning process is another important aspect of this program.

"They identified, from the student and potential graduate perspective, what was important to include.

"Now we'll have a reflection process where the planning group of teachers will gather input from all the teacher participants to fine tune the program for next year.

"The four planning group students will come up with an input tool for the students, and be part of the process for making the program better for next year."

Grad adviser Gord Billard took part in the retreat and said students participated in numerous academic and bonding activities, as well as a bannock-cooking contest, geo-caching, target practice and leadership-and team-building games.

He said the miniature camp had a cook to prepare the meals and an industrial arts teacher even build a little outhouse at the site.

"It was amazing what we managed to pull together for it all," said Billard.

"Ultimately, the purpose of a program like this is to increase our number of graduates.

"The trip was billed as a leadership retreat, but, in addition to trying to build leaders, we were also trying to encourage the kids to come to school more and focus on the requirements they need to graduate and how they can earn them.

"We also discussed some of the obstacles that could keep them from graduating and then wrote down ways we could solve those problems."

Billard said a lot of bases were covered during the retreat to have the kids understand their grad requirements and who's there to help them along the way.

He said a good deal of time was spent on bonding and building positive relationships.

"Hopefully, we were successful in getting some kids, who are probably not as serious as they might be about graduating, to realize they can do this.

"We worked to get the message across to these kids that there are people there to help them and they shouldn't simply give up whenever they run into trouble.

"A number of students left the retreat feeling better about themselves and we identified some people in our grad group, who we really didn't realize were leaders, who rose to the challenges presented to them.

"So, overall, I'd have to say the program was very, very successful on a number of levels and, almost as importantly, everyone had a good time and truly seemed to enjoy the experience."

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