Endurance Challenge teaches teamwork at Wellington

WELLINGTON — Hatchet throwing, BB gun shooting, one-on-one soccer and cooking over an open fire may not seem like English class skills, but for 37 students at Wellington High School, they are requirements for the annual Endurance Challenge.

For more than a decade, teaching veteran Dave Conklin has used the Endurance Challenge to engage students and elicit understanding and empathy for British explorer Ernest Shackleton and his crew.

He first got the idea for the challenge after reading “The Endurance: Shackleton’s Legendary Antarctic Expedition” by Caroline Alexander.

“The expedition was a total failure,” Conklin said. “They never made it to the continent. But the book was a real page turner for me. The author pulled information from crew members’ journals and they had an incredible photographer with them. I shared it with another teacher at Wellington, and it was a page turner for her as well. But for students, they just couldn’t get through it. It was such a great story that I knew I needed to try to get the message across.”

The message: Failure created this incredible survival story, Conklin said.

Shackleton and his crew were stranded for months, first on their ship, the Endurance, which was trapped by ice, then later on the ice itself, once the ship was crushed by the ice and sank. Eventually, the crew set out in lifeboats for salvation. Miraculously, everyone survived.

So did the brave sophomores in Conklin’s classes, who on Friday battled the winter weather, rugged terrain and survival challenges set up at Conklin’s farm.

The first task of the day was to build a sledge and pull it, loaded with at least one team member, equipment and supplies, to Endurance Camp.

Students built fires without matches and cooked meat over an open flame; built a shelter to fit all its team members using a tarp, string and sticks; and participated in various challenges, such as the above-mentioned hatchet throwing, target shooting and soccer, as well as synchronized skiing, rowing, and a hill ascent/descent — a grueling relay at the end of the day up a steep incline and back down. Of course, there were some more traditional English class challenges as well, such as reciting a team poem, making a journal entry and a fine-arts performance.

But students are likely to tell stories of the weather conditions, the fatigue and the overall ruggedness of the event much longer than they recall in their journal entries.

Still, 15-year-old Baron Turner, who along with his team the Meat Munchers tied for first place, said he would do it all again, if he could.

“I’d heard of the challenge as a freshmen, but no one would ever say what it was about,” he said. “All they’d say was, ‘You just have to wait and find out.’”

Olivia Ramirez, 15, had two older siblings to warn her about the challenge — one who did it and one who did not.

“They just said it required a lot of physical and mental strength,” she said. “It made me nervous, but I still wanted to do it.”

As part of the Beefy Warriors team, Olivia’s group of four had their struggles from the beginning.

“It caught me by surprise how hard it actually was,” she said. “Pulling the sledge uphill was hard for us. It took us an hour to complete and we came up to that final hill and saw other teams with their tents already up, that was hard. We definitely knew at that point we weren’t winning, but it changed my perspective.

Instead of trying to win, we had to make the best of what we had.”

Baron said building the sledge was easy, but pulling it required more endurance than he realized.

“You really had to dig deep and apply your strength,” he said. “I enjoy being outdoors and using different survival skills and building relationships, but it was hard.”

The crew of the Endurance had many more challenges in 1915 than the students — and for a much longer period of time, Baron realized throughout the challenge.

At the end of the day, as he climbed back on the bus to return to school, he was excited to rest his legs, but also pleased that he was able to participate in the challenge.

“It’s something you only get to do one time in your life,” he said.

Olivia was surprised by how hard the challenge was.

“We made the most of it and it was fun for everyone to go through it,” she said. “You really felt like you were part of a team. It brought us all closer together. What we did was not nearly as much as they did on the ice, but no matter how hard it was, they didn’t stop. There were times when we wanted to quit, but for them it was life or death.”

From a teaching perspective, it seems as if Conklin’s lesson was learned.