King Edward School, Banff - P7 Summitting

Retired P7 teacher, Stuart Campbell, says -
 
"The cairn just below the summit has been slowly put together by the Primary Seven class at King Edward School (just outside Banff).
 
I'd been leading the kids up Ben Rinnes every year for about four years , as part of their end of school activities and as preparation for going on to Secondary school
 
Reaching the cairn was an incentive for some of the less enthusiastic participants!
 
The hill acts as all sorts of positive metaphors for their coming challenges: 'One step at a time; think ahead; slowly does it; etc, etc.'
The kids never lacked enthusiasm!
Sure, it was more of an effort for some of them compared to others, but it was 'challenge by choice' and they all rose to the occasion and found that rewarding.
 
It became a standard event in the school calendar; some of them even started discussing the trip at Christmas time! The idea of the cairn was to give them a bit of a marker that said 'nearly there!'
 
It is a bit of a slog when you're only 11 years old and, although I knew exactly where I was, there's not a lot of natural landmarks that the kids could use to gauge how they were doing (they did their own navigating, I just checked it).
 
All the kids 'summited' each year and all of them were very proud of the feeling of success and of carrying on a tradition."
 
The tradition has been halted for the moment as there is only one pupil in P7 this year but it's hoped that the school will take the challenge up again once pupil numbers rise.
 
Congratulations to all of the pupils who have succeeded in 'summitting' over the past years.