The challenge
Letting go of the reins so students can discover their own path
Every teacher carries a memory or two that outlives the semesters, a reminder of why we chose this path. Mine lives in the forests of Kananaskis, where I led Grade 9 students on a survival trip—four days, three nights and a world away from our classroom routines.
The students trained for months. They studied ethics and safety through hunter education. They honed skills with maps, bows and Moran knives. But the real lessons, the ones that lasted, came not from the curriculum, but from the quiet resilience and transformation that took root in the wild.
When we arrived at camp, which was three hours from the nearest cellphone signal, the students built their lean-tos so well that even a Marriott executive might have reconsidered their business model. Fires sparked to life with such precision that Smokey the Bear himself might have smiled (after double-checking our fire permits, of course).
One student, Aidan, was known in the city for disruption. But in the forest, he thrived.
First to light his fire. First to guide his group back home by compass. His lean-to stood like a fortress. On our final night, beside a crackling fire, he said softly, “I didn’t know I could be good at anything until now.”
That moment reminds me why this work matters.
Beyond shelters and archery, students rediscovered something deeper: how to listen to the land, each other and themselves. Cliques faded. Leaders emerged. They faced rain, fatigue, lost phones, and grew.
When we left, we took everything with us, leaving the area exactly as we’d found it, but we also carried something else back with us: a reverence for the earth and ourselves.
Years later, former students, some now rangers, scientists or teachers, still remember the forest, the fire and who they became when tested.
In today’s overburdened classrooms, this trip taught me that teaching isn’t about holding the reins; it’s about clearing a path for discovery.
Sometimes, the most enduring lessons happen around a fire, under an open sky.
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