Jumping out of trees for the sake of teamwork!

As I said before, the student ambassadors are pretty much the best of the best when it comes to the Core Values of Southwest Tech. But what does it take to become an ambassador besides those key personality traits? Well it takes some paperwork, meetings, and oh yes...possibly jumping out of a tree or two.
 The first step to becoming a student ambassador is to actually hear about the Ambassador team at SWTC. There are several ways that students, including myself, heard about this opportunity here in the 2013-2014 school year. Some ambassadors were recruited through teacher's recommendation, other ambassadors saw one of the five million flyers about the ambassador program floating around the school, and more even came back from the previous year's team. After hearing about the team, the second step is a jumble of meetings and paper work. Once a student has applied to the Ambassador team, he/she is emailed if they are accepted for an interview. This interview consists of reason's why that student wanted to be an ambassador, who they are, and etc. Then, after the interview, the student will receive an email of congratulations from Allison Carroll, the Career Coach and head of the Student Ambassadors at SWTC. Their only responsibility after that is to complete a series of safety and legal documents before they are technically employed as Student Ambassadors.
After all the crossing the T's and dotting the I's, the new ambassador team meet for a small one hour training, and then, shortly after that, they all meet for a full day training session. This training session entails something a little bit more interesting. This year the ambassador team went to Bethel Horizons in Dodgeville WI. Bethel Horizons is a team building organization that boasts it's own ropes courses and zip line. Every year the student ambassadors of Southwest Tech travel to Bethel Horizons to transform from strangers, into a functioning unit; a team.
On October 11, 2013 the new Student Ambassador team gathered and traveled over to Bethel Horizons. Their day of team building began with a series of fun high five exercises. The ambassadors had to learn the names of their partners then run find a new partner for each new type of high five. Each time there was a new type of high five, the partners had to say their partners names and yell what they were doing. There was the typical high five, then low five, fist bump, hand shake, sawing wood (clasping the hands together and yelling TIMBER!), and many more. Needless to say, by the time the exercises were over, the team was falling over each other to get to their partners. Overall the ambassadors had a great time with it. Everyone was laughing and getting to know each other fairly quickly. After that, the ambassadors began a new series of balance exercises. They had to balance each other's weight completely is a plethora of different positions. Positions like head to head, back to back, side to side with feet touching, side to side with feet in the air, and etc. This exercise had the same effect with the whole assembly of ambassadors laughing, getting to know each other, falling all over the place, and just having a great time. It was all going great, but still the highlight of the day was yet to come; the zip line.
The ambassadors trecked through the woods to get to Bethel Horizon's high ropes course. The team was split and each group was headed in different directions. The first group would begin zip lining first, while the second would stay and work on the ground. The emphasis on the entire day was to build trust and work together as a team with the other ambassadors. Every exercise that the ambassadors did this October day required team work. On the low ropes course, the groups had to use two 2x10's to get from platform to platform without anyone touching the ground. This entailed total group cooperation. Two people had to stand on one edge of the "bridge" to support the weight of anyone crossing. The ambassadors used prior knowledge and teamwork to accomplish this task; every ambassador made it to the final platform without touching the ground. In addition, the zip line process required group process and team work. The zip line was a forty to fifty foot pole with a small platform on top of it where the zip line attached. Each ambassador got a chance to climb the pole and jump. As each ambassador ascended they had to rely on their fellow ambassadors to support their weight on the harness ropes and to catch them on the other end of the zip line. For some this task was a lot to ask. Mindy, Zack, and Ben (Myself) are all ambassadors scared of heights. But putting trust in their teammates, and in themselves, they all ended up zip lining. The day was even capped off by Zack, the one most terrified of heights, taking the last leap off the zip line tower.
All together, the team had a lot of fun at Bethel Horizons. From the high fives, falling all over each other, to finally taking the leap of faith off of the zip line the day proved to be a total success. Moreover, the newly formed ambassador team learned about teamwork and how they all relate to each other in working situations. This year, like in years past the ambassadors had a great time, but more importantly, they learned that teamwork is how to accomplish goals. It can certainly be said that this 2013-2014 ambassador team started out as strangers that October day, but left Bethel Horizons as a functioning team.