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McCarty Center
Hosts Whittier Middle School WOW Activity
May 18, 2010) Each
spring eighth grade students at Whittier Middle
School participate in a week- long academic
exercise that takes them outside their normal
classroom environment. It’s Whittier Outdoor
Week, or WOW for short.
One of the events of WOW
was literally blown off the schedule as the
May 10 tornado struck and closed down Lake Thunderbird
leaving the Whittier teaching staff looking
for a last minute location in order to save
this lake area activity.
When eighth grader Briana
Kuestersteffen told her mother, Vicki, about
this glitch in the WOW activities plan Vicki
contacted Hollis Clarke, Whittier teacher and
WOW organizer, and proposed a solution to their
problem. Vicki Kuestersteffen, deputy director
of the McCarty Center, offered an area around
the lake on the McCarty Center’s campus
for their activity.
“This turned out to
be a good opportunity for the McCarty Center,”
explained Vicki Kuestersteffen. “We have
plans in the works to expand our visibility
in the community. The first step in that plan
is to encourage more involvement from middle
school and high school students in projects
here at the hospital through the school’s
leadership programs. Being able to offer our
facility for WOW was a good way to introduce
a large number of incoming high school freshmen
to our hospital. I will be scheduling meetings
with the middle school and high school principals
this fall to layout our proposal for future
student involvement.”
During WOW the eighth grade
class is divided into three groups of 75 students.
Each day during WOW the three groups travel
to different venues in the metro area to study.
The venues included the Jim Thorpe Sports Museum,
the Oklahoma State Capitol and the Oklahoma
City National Memorial and Museum.
Every activity is connected
to an English, social studies, science and math
lesson. And the students are graded during these
activities.
At the McCarty Center the
students fished, conducted an environmental
study of flora and fauna around the lake, and
completed a team building exercise called the
trust walk.
“The purpose
of today’s activity is to show kids that
there are fun things to do besides playing video
games,” said Kim Murray, Whittier English
teacher, as she helped to instruct her group
of students in the finer points of baiting a
fish hook with worms. “As a part of their
English grade, our students will keep journals
about each day’s events,” Murray added.
While Murray’s group
was fishing another group was learning about
trust and decision-making. While blindfolded,
students were lead by their teachers to a rope
trail where the students followed a rope tied
to a series of trees. The course changed direction
at each tree. This exercise was done in complete
silence. There were no verbal instructions once
the exercise began, only the occasional gentle
touch on the shoulder to indicate what direction
to move.
At the end of the exercise
Brent Hodges, special education teacher and
girls basketball coach at Whittier, talked with
the group about learning to trust themselves
and being careful about who they put their trust
in, as they get ready to transition into high
school.
Other activities during
WOW included mock job interviews. Local business
people assisted in interviewing students to
help them understand what a business would be
looking for in a job applicant. Students also
wrote letters to themselves about their expectations
and goals for high school. The letters are placed
in the student’s school file and then returned
to them at the end of their senior year.
For more information
about the Whittier Middle School Warriors visit
www.whittierweb.webnode.com
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| Brent Hodges, Whittier
Middle School special education teacher
and girl's basketball coach, asks for a
show of hands as he leads a discussion about
the trust walk experience. The trust walk
was just one of several activities that
eighth graders participated in during Whittier's
annual WOW week. The trust walk was conducted
on the J. D. McCarty Center campus when
the May 10 tornado closed down Lake Thunderbird,
the original location for this event. |
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