For this year I have chosen to do Muir for my elective for Semester 2, during these two terms I have learnt so many skills from this class such as archery, orienteering, and snorkelling This class has helped my discover so many new skills that I thought I would have never been able to learn or be good at. Along with learning new skills we also leant about sustainability and the Leave no Trace concept to preserve our environment.
Goals
Over the course of this semester I have set various goals for myself with some being very simple and basic that could be easily achieved and some goals that were a bit more hard to achieve. Some of these goals was for archery, with the very first goal that I set for myself being to hit the target, which I did very well, and then over the next few periods as I improved my archery skills I set harder goals like to hit in the yellow circle, and to hit a bullseye, both of those goals took a lot of lessons to achieve.
Orienteering
At the very start of this class we learnt about orienteering and how to navigate my surroundings using a map and a compass.During our double periods we went to Piney Lakes and other parks so we could try and navigate our surroundings. For this we were put in groups so effective communication was key for our group to do well and succeed. The parks we went to all had very different environments we weren’t familiar so we had to communicate well so we all knew where we were, what we were doing, and what we were going to do next so we could complete the course in the most efficient way.
Archery
Another part of Muir was learning archery. This was one of my favourite things we did in the class, we were taught how to hold a bow, shoot and arrow, and how to aim all by our instructor Mary from Archery 2 U. The capability I used the most in this activity was self awareness, with having to clear my mind every time I had to shoot the arrow so I can concentrate better on hitting the target and not missing. Along with having to be self aware of the angle of my bow so the arrow doesn’t shoot too hing above the target or too low.
Snorkelling
Snorkelling was something that I was very unfamiliar with since I have never started was didn’t know a lot of things. I had to be really resilient since a lot of the classes were difficult for me since I was still learning, with having to learn how to duck dive and learning how to blow all the water out of my snorkel. Learning how to snorkel required me to be more resilient and persist through the hardships, like when my legs were getting tired after duck diving but I pushed myself so I could finish a lap. At the end of the course I was very proud of myself because I learnt a new skill even though I found it very hard, I was resilient and was able to learn a new skill.
Leave No Trace
There are 7 main principles of Leave No Trace, during our excursions we mainly focused on two
Leave What You Find
This is the 4th principle of Leave No Trace and it’s about preserving the flora of the place you are at and leaving everything the way it was before when you arrived. This is so the native plants and animals aren’t affected by our visit plus leaving it the same for other people to enjoy. We did this during our excursions to Piney Lakes and Manning with making sure we didn’t leave any rubbish and not bringing much stuff with us when we were orienteering.
Be Considerate of Visitors
This is the 7th principle of Leave no Trace and this principle is about treating other people the way you want to be treated, and not disturbing their experience of the place. It is about not disturbing other people by not making a fuss and a ruckus. During our excursions out of school we definetly had to be respectful of other people since the places we were visiting were public spaces where other people were there to enjoy their experience.