Teamwork on Year 9 OLP

Teamwork is a skill that everyone will need at some point in their life so I believe it is important we start developing that skill now while we are young. Teamwork means that everyone works together efficiently and everyone in the group has a specific role to get something done. It also means that everyone is included and can contribute ideas.

Year 9 OLP is an experience that I will never forget and one that provided many challenges for my camp group to work together and find a way past them. Each day we had to pack up our tents, move to a new location and then re-set up our tents again. To get to one campsite we had to do a very long and somewhat challenging hike. The saying ‘a chain is only as strong as its’ weakest link’ means that a group of people/team can only be as strong as its weakest person, so if one person struggles then the rest of the team should work together and help them. This is exactly what happened on the hike. Members of the group where struggling a little and taking longer to make it down the hill. The rest of the group noticed this so some people went to the back to help and wait for them while others went to the front to guide the way and give some tips like “careful of that wobbly rock”. When the group in front got a bit far ahead, they would yell “pop” and the person at the back would yell “corn” to let them know they were okay. This type of communication and method of helping each other is one way that my group used teamwork to make sure everyone made it safely through the hike.

Another way my group used teamwork on camp was by dividing everyone into smaller teams within our group who would each take care of something different. The smaller teams took care of cooking, environment, hygiene and leadership. The cooking team would pack the food, evenly give food for people to carry, prepare the food for lunch and redistribute all the food when it was time to cook dinner. Environment team would lead emu bobs so that after each meal we didn’t leave any scraps behind and when we left our campsite it was clean and tidy. Hygiene team would set up hand washes and toilets if necessary, at the campsites. The leadership team made sure that this all ran smoothly; everyone was doing their jobs properly and on time. Every day the teams would switch around so that you were doing something different to the day before. This way everyone got to try different ways to work together as a team whilst also making sure everything got done effectively.

The year 9 OLP has been my favourite camp at All Saints so far and a great experience where I got to bond with the people in my group, explore beautiful Kalbarri gorges and practice and develop teamwork skills which I will need for the rest of my life.