Newtown High School freshmen kicked off their school year with a field trip to the Thompson Island Outward Bound Educational Center in Boston Harbor. The field trip was spread over three days from Tuesday, September 17 to Thursday, September 19, with one third of the freshman class going on each day.

Outward Bound is an international network of nonprofit organizations that offer various adventure and wilderness education programs. During her report at the September 3 Board of Education meeting, Superintendent of Schools Anne Uberti said that Outward Bound’s experiential outdoor learning opportunities “directly aligns with our district’s Project Adventure programming” and thanked BOE member John Vouros and former BOE member Donald Ramsey for their work in “helping turn this idea into a reality.”

She says the field trip was ultimately made possible largely due to a substantial donation from former Newtown Public Schools graduate Austin McChord.

“Special thanks to our donor … Austin McChord for making a donation that really supported this fantastic opportunity,” Uberti said during the September 17 BOE meeting. “Hopefully it’s something we can continue doing for our freshmen coming in. I think it would be fantastic.”

For each day of the trip, students, joined by four chaperones, left the high school at 6 am to make their several hour bus ride to Boston. Upon arrival, they got on a private Outward Bound ferry that took them through Boston Harbor and onto Thompson Island, which is one of the islands in the harbor and is owned by Outward Bound.

According to NHS Principal Kimberly Longobucco, who went on the first day of the trip as one of the chaperones, the program for each day of the trip was very similar. After a large group orientation going over the expectations of the island, they split off into small groups of ten students paired with two facilitators from Outward Bound as their group for the day.

Students started with some icebreaker exercises, but that led into team building activities, a break for lunch, high ropes climbing, and trust building exercises as the day went on. One of the attractions on the island was Alpine Tower, an obstacle course challenge that students could climb multiple times. Students could take on different roles like spotter, belayer, and climber and work together to work their way up the different routes up the tower.

Longobucco said that it was a wonderful experience for the students to start their freshman year while learning to respect others and trust their classmates, as well as challenge themselves.

“A lot of kids overcame their fears and reservations about being able to climb, and they were supportive of each other. It was a really awesome experience for me to see the class … just come together as a group to support their classmates, be outside, and do things outside of the school to set the tone for the school year,” Longobucco said.

For Longobucco, she says that her experience on the trip was excellent. She said that she does not get to go on field trips often due to her obligations as a principal, and that this one was particularly nice because she does not know the freshmen all too well yet.

“And so I was able to spend the day with a third of our freshman class and get to know some students and learn some names, and it was really nice,” Longobucco said. “And I think it was nice for them to see me in a different light. You know, I wasn’t there as the principal, I was there as a chaperone and wearing my athletic gear just like they were.”

As to whether they would continue having this field trip in the future, Longobucco says that they need to have some further conversations. She said they were very fortunate this year to have it completely grant funded and, in turn, cost students very little money to go. Not knowing whether that will always be the case in the future, she says that they have to weigh the cost and distance and are potentially looking at a little restructuring of it.

“You know, it’s a long way to go to not do an overnight, and they have housing there on the island. There’s lots of possibilities; things that we could look into and kind of further investigate to see if we would like to do that in the future,” Longobucco said.

From Middle School To High School

According to Longobucco, the Outward Bound field trip had actually started as a Newtown Middle School trip instead of one for NHS.

“They were looking for the current ninth graders to potentially go last year, and then it just didn’t pan out,” Longobucco said.

She says that Vouros and NMS Principal Jim Ross had taken a trip out to Thompson Island with former Superintendent of Schools Christopher Melillo. At that point, since it was still planned to be a middle school field trip, Longobucco says she was not involved and that they were the ones taking it on. The three of them really loved the experience and said that the facility was wonderful, but Longobucco said that there was “just no time at the end of eighth grade to get it in.”

“And so that’s how it came to me,” Longobucco explained. “And then they shared all the information, contacts, things like that. From there, we had some preliminary meetings about cost, what the trip will look like, how we could split up the kids, and how many days we realistically needed to set aside and make all this happen.”

The field trip was not easy to plan and took a lot of management, especially considering how early it came in the school year. Longobucco says that they learned quickly how hard it is to do a field trip right at the beginning of the school year, as they had to collect information from the parents and get everything organized.

“We put it out on the second day of school, like we got it right out there as soon as we could, but it was still so busy,” Longobucco said.

Even though the Outward Bound field trip was not originally intended for the high school and was arranged during the busy start of the year, Longobucco says she feels like everything worked out great.

“I can speak to the students on my day, and they really enjoyed it. They liked the activities, they liked being outside, they liked being able to be kids and play and explore, and they definitely liked the opportunity to climb. I think that was really fun for them,” Longobucco said. “They all got to bond with each other. It definitely fulfilled the purpose that we were looking for.”

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Reporter Jenna Visca can be reached at jenna@thebee.com.