I couldn’t resist heading over to the Middle School as they prepared to depart for an overnight orientation experience at Camp Becket, under the guidance of our incredibly dedicated faculty. Students carried their gear in any manner of expedience, from duffle to plastic bags. I looked for a protruding teddy bear and found one gingerly stowed in one student’s belongings. What I did not see were iPods, cell phones, Blackberries, or other assorted electronic “necessities” of the contemporary teenager’s life.
On their trip, middle school students had a chance to unplug—and in the case of ropes course work, harness up—as they got to know one another better and enjoy camp life for a day and a half. Their learning experiences at Camp Becket were personal, interactive, and intentionally “old school.” In contrast, their world at Whitaker-Bement this year will be defined by one-to-one laptop computing so students can access the work they did at school while doing homework by virtue of cloud-computing—it’s a learning environment of truly astonishing and limitless potential!