Home

Mendham High School Challenge Adventure

Challenges are what makes life interesting, overcoming them is what makes life meaningful - Joshua J. Marine

Home

MISSION STATEMENT

The mission of the West Morris Regional High School District is to provide a dynamic learning experience that promotes academic excellence, increasing personal responsibility, and a passion for knowledge, while developing each student’s unique potential and fostering involved citizenship.

PHILOSOPHY

West Morris Mendham High School is engaged in an exciting cooperative learning Physical Education course entitled Challenge Adventure! As a required part of the grade 9 and 10 curriculum, the sequence continues with Challenge Adventure being an elective course in grades 11 and 12.

Challenge Adventure students receive instruction in the needed safety procedures to participate in the program. Some activities are very challenging, but all are safe! The students will participate at their own level of comfort and will be evaluated upon completion of the course. In signing a full value contract, individuals agree to the behavioral guidelines as a way of assuring that all students fully understand what is expected and what is accepted.

The basic aims and objectives for Challenge Adventure are outlined below. These goals are:

· To develop an increased joy in one’s physical self, and in being with others. One criterion which is used in assessing various activities is that it must have an element of fun. Instructors are not solemnly engaged in building confidence, social cohesion, and agility to the exclusion of these other factors. Just as people in the program may be regularly anxious and even fearful, so should they even more regularly experience joy, laughter, and anticipation.

The program is designed to give the participants many opportunities to come to recognize that they are physical beings and that using one’s body can be a joyous, satisfying, exhilarating and unambiguous experience.

· To develop and increase familiarity and identification with the natural world. Young people have often had little experience with sun, rain, snow, cold, spring, fall, and winter. These units will be taught indoors and outdoors. In many ways the course and the challenges involved are uncompromising. For students, the experience is both stressful and joyous. Ideally, as they dare to try, they begin to experience physical success and recognize that the seemingly difficult is quite possible. Their struggles are often the beginning of maturity, which we believe entails in part, having real experience with a wide range of natural human reactions - tears, joy, fatigue, comparison, laughter, pain and love.

· To increase the participant’s sense of personal confidence. The aim of many activities is to allow students to view themselves as increasingly capable and competent. By attempting a graduated series of activities which involve physical challenges and succeeding (or sometimes failing) in a supportive group atmosphere, a student may begin to develop true self-esteem.

· To encourage students to try new and different activities - some of which may involve initial anxiety. It is our belief that as mature persons students need to learn to be familiar with the anxiety that precedes any new venture, cope with uncertainty, and dare to enter fully into new situations.

Students are required to participate in all group activities, but may decline to attempt individual challenges that they feel are beyond their personal limits.

· To increase mutual support within a group. The course is based on the assumption that anyone who consciously tries, should be respected. Success and failure are less important than an effort. In many cases, the success or failure of a group depends on the efforts of its members. A cooperative, supportive atmosphere tends to encourage participation. The use of teams, points, and time competition has consciously been minimized.

· To develop an increased level of agility and physical coordination. A number of exercises entail the use of balance and smoothly flowing movement. Balance and coordinated movement form the basis for many physical activities ranging from dancing to track and football. A person who perceives him/herself as physically awkward often sees him/herself as inadequate in other ways. Balance activities which can be successfully completed often provide a feeling of accomplishment.