Before my first trip to Finland with Mat, I had never been on a plane, let alone to such a harsh climate! It really built my confidence as a person and motivated me to do more, but doing it the second time was completely different and an incredible opportunity that has helped me as a person.
Throughout the week there were difficulties – but not like last time… This this it was about making myself a leader. The training on how to be a good leader, that we had done with Mat, was really eye opening. For students who were more reluctant to do activities, at first it was difficult to motivate them through talking without painting myself as a villain who’s just there to tell them off.
Overall, my development with the students and myself as a leader was good and I feel like I’ve really learnt something useful for life.
Spending time with people so experienced in the outdoor field was incredible, Mat and Ian’s stories were always hard to even believe let alone know it happened to them, but learning through their own stories really helped me to understand what to do and how to move forward, I’ve never experienced something that was so positive in helping me better myself and something that helped me begin to learn how to help others.
When I was younger, I always had a passion for camping and the outdoors. I always enjoyed water sports but had never really been open to the idea of hiking and expeditions until my trip to Finland in 2023.
On this life changing trip, I faced many challenges but never felt like I was struggling, as I always had my friends by my side. I was also offered so much support from the Polaris Outdoor team such as providing moral boosts and never failing to make us laugh. However, one particular challenge that stands out was the hike up Tankavaara hill as I did this on skis. Due to the cold weather (-15 degrees Celsius) and the challenging terrain there were moments where I felt like giving up. However, with the encouragement of the people around me, I did the full 7k walk and felt amazing at the end. Additionally, another highlight from the trip was definitely Huski dog-sledding, it was unlike anything I had ever experienced before, and I remember laughing through the whole thing. Overall, I definitely made some of my funniest and most precious memories on this trip and it is something I will never forget.
I found it very different seeing things from a leader’s perspective and it came with very different challenges. Instead of only considering my abilities and what I wanted to achieve I had to consider the physical and mental ability of the other students I was working with and ensure we managed their capabilities.
An example of this was when a student fainted during a hike and the group had to return to the accommodation. The student was upset as they felt like they had held back the group and I had to explain to them the importance of teamwork and all having to look after each other in this environment. The experience of a real life rescue was a brilliant learning experience for all of us and everyone rallied around so well to put everything we had learned into practice.
As well as the serious side of the trip there were many funny moments on the trip as seen in the photo. It’s so important to keep a positive attitude and see the bright side of things. Challenging situations can often be defused by a bit of humour.
The trip was such a different experience as it involved working closely with the trained Expedition Leaders and earning the respect of the students instead of being one of them. I really enjoyed it and am looking forward to my next opportunity to build my skills toward becoming a young leader.
Last year, was my first trip out to Finland. It was, and still is, my favourite place to visit. Finland holds hundreds of things to do in all shapes and sizes yet is not an environment for the faint hearted.
Last year when I attended as a student, it was a holiday of fun, joy and new experiences. The Expedition this year was a lot a more than just a holiday, yet it still embodied all of those traits with a further factor of development as a leader, and personal development as well. Over the course of the week Mat and the team aided the young leaders on ways to develop how we conduct ourselves in everyday life, and as a leader. He talked about different techniques and showed us how to implement them, before letting us have a go ourselves throughout the expedition helping the students. For me, I feel that I had a significant improvement over the course of the week. I felt with the leaders’ help, I managed to overcome social fears and prove to myself that I had the confidence to speak up, and to conduct a group efficiently, and successfully whilst still allowing the group to have the best possible time. I was also taught how to look after myself properly in ways that I had never even thought of, widening my scope of vision as I came home and began to embrace a better version of myself.
Finland was never going to be easy, and at times it did prove difficult. Being just a year older than the students, I was seen as a friend to them as opposed to a leader. My goal was to maintain, and even build this friendship yet assert myself as a leader. This was difficult, yet again thanks to Mat’s help, I was taught how to slowly build the gap between friendships and a leader and by the end of the week I feel that I was seen as a youth leader yet still a friendly face. Furthermore, as well as mentally pushing myself to stand out, I was able to physically push and test myself. I joined both groups on their day hikes, and helped out others, all adding up to me hiking the best part of 30km along undulating snowy terrain.
Finland was full of successes for all of us, on both a group and individual level. These successes varied from winning games of pool in the restaurant, to teaching others skills, and watching them master them. One of the student tasks was to learn how to light a fire using the bare essentials – birch bark with flint and steel. Over the course of the week I taught them how to pick birch bark in the most sustainable way, the different ways of laying fires and their uses, and the correct technique to nail lighting the fire first time, every time. For me this was a huge success despite the fact it wasn’t my own achievement.
As daunting as the challenges were I left with a large sense of achievement and pride by the end of the week. The students left me proud to have been one of their leaders, and grateful for their eagerness to learn. However, I am most thankful towards the leaders of the expedition, and Mat in particular for his help on all levels of the trip from simple organisation skills, to how to create a successful and competent plan for an expedition anywhere around the world.
This trip has left me with an abundance of improved attributes and skills and a desire to learn, improve and develop these skills even more. Thank you
It can be hard to know where to start when creating an outdoor programme at your school. Here are a few ideas and pointers to consider before you begin.
Funding
Who’s going to pay for it? You could organise an activity, put a letter out to parents, and get it paid for. But if the families in your school don’t have disposable income, or if this is an unexpected outlay, activities may not get off the ground if you don’t get enthusiasm from parents and expected numbers. Speak to the school bursar and management to gauge the type and cost of your first activity; you don’t want your program to fail before you start. Setting up activities on the calendar with sufficient time will help families fund activities. Make sure you are well organised and keep your families in the loop with enthusiastic letters and correspondence via your school website and social media.
If you have school staff with existing expertise, this is a good place to begin. Consider a local or on-site activity that has low to zero cost. Remember that time and money come via school management support, so get some support.
Management support
This is the key to a long-lasting outdoor program. School leadership will determine time and money to be spent. The following series of questions should be considered before you dive in.
How much in/out of hours time are staff going to spend on this program? It is important to remember that risk assessment writing and paperwork for outdoor departments takes time. Local activities can use between 2-10 hours of planning, but expeditions and trips can be 10-60 hours of planning or more!
Consider interspersing in house activities with a good outdoor provider; this will cut down on paperwork.
Will time spent on planning/running activities affect teaching and planning time, and if so, how do you compensate for this? Two possible answers are given below.
Reduce the teachers classroom timetable to help the program grow to success… is this affordable?
Incentivise teaching staff with financial benefits or management positions and/or training.
How you make your activities safe and accessible?
Consider training and development for teachers. Safety is paramount, so invest in training your staff or recruit those with existing expertise. Financial benefits help with teacher retention at the school. Also, training/investing in teachers often increases the longevity potential of an ‘in house’ program.
Create standardised infrastructure
This is the part that I see least of all when helping schools create and run outdoor programs, and it is the main reason that they fall apart or fade away. Your in house expert often has great lesson plans and planning documents that might be kept on their own computer, so when they move away, the documents move with them and also their expertise. Here are a few things you can do to keep your ideas alive, year after year.
Reporting. Have your expert report up the line to management. This keeps management involved and interested.
Create standardised paperwork. This allows other teachers to learn how to plan, and also encourages them to create their own activities. Have school drive space made available so everyone can access materials.
Invest in training for staff. If your in house team are good enough they can train one another, if not, get outside help and qualifications, trying to have several teachers involved at any one time.
Have a kit store and keep it well organised. If your teachers move on, you will always have some equipment, and if well organised, that kit will relate to the lesson plans, risk assessments and other paperwork that you have created as a team. I love walking into someone else’s kit-store with a lesson plan that has a kit list on it and instantly find everything I need!
If you want to chat further about setting up activities at your school email Mat Barnsley at:
I’ve always liked shiny things. A treasure hunter at heart. Treasure comes in many forms, but non so familiar as pure gold! Maybe that was a subconscious reason that I ended up becoming an exploration geologist: travelling the world looking for shiny things fulfilled two of my greatest passions, and our gold hunting trip to the Arctic with Latymer Upper School was a really fantastic time that helped me with a third great passion.
Christophe Blanchard is the Head of Art at Latymer Upper, he runs the school’s expeditions programme, and he is a truly gifted individual. His pleasant manner and happy countenance pulls you in to listen to his smooth French accent as he tells you a story or a fact to do with something or other, of which he is brimming; and he has a lovely set of pearly whites to boot. If I could afford to employ him as our company photographer I certainly would, because his photography skills are stunning! And he does most of it with his phone, with what seems to be little to no effort at all for him. He truly has a knack for it. His students and his school are lucky to have him.
Sarah Fordyce is a bundle of fun, and I am pretty sure she could kill you in a fight! She is always where the action is, and she doesn’t hold back to get stuck in with the hard work. She is a great example of someone who sets the standard for her students. She wouldn’t ask anyone to do anything that she wouldn’t do herself.
Great integrity was what I saw on this trip in Sarah. Her students look up to her; they respect her, and she seems to have found the very most perfect balance of friendliness and discipline with her students, something that all of the teachers out there know, is the holy grail of success and development in the classroom. I guess that’s why the school trusts her with the position of Head of Year 13. She sees them off into the real world. I can see she is good at that job; she gets the students prepared to face reality.
We found just over 2 grams of gold on this last trip, a good find for a place that yields 0.5 gram per metric ton of earth dug. The students worked hard and had a great time with the other activities such as spoon and bowl carving, fire lighting and canoeing and wild camping in the wilderness. But the best times were sitting at dinner with new friends sharing stories, great food and lots of laughs. Everyone on that trip made a new connection with someone else. They got to learn something about another person and hopefully something about themselves too, and that to me is treasure.