Schools

SLIP Students' Final Adventure: Creating a Pioneer Village

The finale of this year's Student Leadership Initiative Program found students from four high schools - including both Oswego schools - showing 3rd graders how 1830s settlers lived.

The year is 1830. The place is Shaferton, a settlement in northeastern Illinois. Here, a group of pioneers – who settled in Shaferton only five years before – raise cows, make their own rope, dip their own candles for light, and create fires with flint and steel.

That was the scene on Tuesday and Wednesday of this week, as students from four high schools brought Shaferton to life as their final project in the Student Leadership Initiative Program, or SLIP. The pioneer village was created on the grounds of the Kendall County Outdoor Education Center in Yorkville, with the goal of bringing together all of the leadership skills the students have been learning since the school year began.

SLIP was started in 1994 by Jeff Schafermeyer, who was then director of the Outdoor Education Center. (He subsequently became principal of .) Though the spelling is different, Shaferton is named after Schafermeyer.

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Each class is made up of five sophomores from each participating school – , , Sandwich High and Plano High – for a total of 20 participants, chosen through an application and interview process.

Those students then encounter monthly challenges devised by the OEC’s current director, Deanna Bazan, and her staff. This year’s class was sent on a scavenger hunt through downtown Aurora, armed with only two dollars each and a map. They visited Schafermeyer at Boulder Hill, taking on the role of teachers for a day.

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They cleaned up Hoover Forest Preserve in Yorkville, they traveled to the Morris Courthouse and shadowed public officials, and they underwent a wilderness challenge at the Center, during which they had to rely on each other’s skills.

That all led up to this week. Students designed their own pioneer outfits, and for hours each day, took 3rd graders from Plano schools on a tour of Shaferton, showing them how candles were made (dipping string into buckets of hot wax over and over and over), how rope was created (by twirling thick strands together on a makeshift loom), and how cows were branded.

The students chose Jakob Pasdertz of Oswego High School as the mayor of Shaferton on Tuesday, and Bailey Stillman of Oswego East High as Wednesday’s mayor.

For the 3rd graders, Bazan said, this event is their regular outdoor education day at the Center. For the SLIP students, this is the culmination of everything they’ve learned.

“They’re on their own,” Bazan said. “They’ll have adult support, but we won’t take the lead. They’re responsible for doing what they do.”

SLIP students are often not the natural leaders in their classes, according to Melissa Gibson, a counselor at Oswego East. Gibson said she often nominates the “emerging leaders,” those who are often silent, but could step up with the right encouragement. And SLIP is designed to provide that encouragement.

Judging from the comments students left on their anonymous evaluation forms this year, the program works.

“I can be a leader and step forward when it is important,” wrote one. “I did so many things that I did not know I could do.”

“I have learned how to deal with uncomfortable situations and make the best of it,” wrote another.

“One of the most important things I feel I’ve learned is that, more often than not, stepping outside your boundaries results in a positive outcome,” wrote another.

Bazan said one of the best parts of this week’s two-day SLIP finale was seeing students who had experienced this day from the other angle when they were in 3rd grade. Many said they remembered certain high schoolers they met back then, and certain activities that they were now teaching their younger counterparts.

The SLIP students will graduate from the program next Wednesday night at the Kendall County Courthouse in Yorkville. After that, those who want to will move on to SLIP II, a service-oriented program for juniors and seniors. And Bazan and her staff will get ready for another group of excited sophomores next year.

For more information on the SLIP program, check out the Kendall County Outdoor Education Center’s website.


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