In the fall of 2025, we combined the canoe-camping course (Physical Education 103), taught by Christophe and Olivier, with the Quebec literature course (Literature 102), taught by Alexis and Vincent. We structured our courses around a 3-day canoe-camping expedition over the Labour Day weekend. This outing merged canoeing technique instruction with literary workshops. It culminated in the writing of a travel story that integrated physical education concepts and elements of creative writing produced during the trip.
Our 2 courses are fully intertwined in a true interdisciplinary approach. The 4 of us have worked together to make the most of our time in nature to create a memorable learning experience.
The campsite for the 2nd night of our expedition
A few students canoeing
6 geopoetic workshops
For the outing, the literature teachers prepared 6 “geopoetic workshops” that the students completed during the 3-day expedition. These activities were designed to develop the French course competencies while taking advantage of the outdoor setting.
When enrolling in the course, many students probably expected that the “literary” part of the expedition would involve sitting on the sand and listening to lectures … In short, it would be like a traditional class, but in a less comfortable setting, without the teacher having access to a board or screen and without being able to take notes effectively. However, Alexis and Vincent didn’t wish to replicate their usual classroom teaching in the forest. They wanted to use the outdoors to enrich their course and to design activities they couldn’t do in a traditional classroom.
The literature workshops were really great because they couldn’t have been done in a classroom. The surrounding nature truly inspired me.
— A student
For example, one of the workshops called Marie-Victorin sur le Ritalin (Marie-Victorin on Ritalin) asks students to describe a plant in the style of La Flore laurentienne. The other students must then identify each plant based on the description.
A student during the plant description workshop
Another workshop requires students to describe the entire visible landscape from a specific location in just 2 sentences.
All these workshops are based on the idea that inspiration comes more easily outdoors than in a classroom, which can sometimes feel like a sterile environment where the mind struggles to break free from the confines of its walls.
A student at work
Avoiding on-site assessments to ensure a more human experience
Some people are getting into a canoe for the 1st time on the very day our expedition begins. Christophe and Olivier ensure that students make as much progress as possible during the 3-day expedition, since they have no other opportunities to practise outside of class (Olivier and Christophe do not have access to canoes except during the trip). Students need to experience both front and rear positions in the canoe and practise different paddle strokes. The weekend concludes with a descent of an R2 rapid, which we prepare for and tackle together. The expedition also includes learning about several concepts related to outdoor expeditions, such as nutrition, emergency planning, and ethics.
Christophe and Olivier do not assess the students’ technique or performance during the outing. The expedition is a laboratory, an experiment that serves as a basis for reflection afterward. It is this reflection, an analysis carried out calmly in the classroom, that is evaluated. This approach aligns with the recommendations of the report by the Conseil supérieur de l’éducation, Evaluating So It Truly Counts [PDF], which encourages allowing more room for mistakes and using those mistakes as a source for learning.
I appreciated that we were constantly striving to improve and that we received guidance throughout the weekend.
— A student
Storytelling and songs
On the 1st evening, Alexis recited from memory Les marionnettes, a story by Louis Fréchette about the northern lights. The 2nd evening was devoted to songs around the campfire. Among other songs, Alexis and Vincent performed a song they co-wrote titled La Gens-de-terre. This 12-minute song tells of a previous, wild expedition they undertook on the river of the same name. The students laughed heartily. Alexis and Vincent also sang their musical adaptation of Alfred DesRochers’ poem Liminaire a cappella and in harmony. Several students cited this evening as one of the highlights of the course. Evenings spent outdoors are ideal to build educational connections between teachers and students and, above all, to foster lasting learning experiences thanks to the positive environment-related stimuli including the campfire, music, and time spent together.
The evening around the campfire with guitars was incredible! It was my favourite part of the trip.
— A student
The group around the campfire
Enforcing a digital detox
We asked students to experience a digital detox during the expedition. When we announced this in class before the trip, it caused a bit of anxiety. However, we were totally committed to this digital detox, with the aim of fostering a connection with nature. Students were allowed to contact their families at specific times (after all, our students are still quite young, and the expedition could raise some concerns).
One memorable remark was from a student who told us that when she returned from the expedition, she was convinced she had “missed out on a lot,” but eventually realized that wasn’t the case at all. The experience led her to turn off notifications on her phone and decide to check in when it suited her, understanding that the perpetual sense of urgency she had always felt wasn’t justified.
One of the highlights was completely disconnecting from the virtual world and reconnecting with the real world. I loved meeting people and being surrounded by nature.
— A student
Over the past few years, we’ve noticed in our classrooms that students hardly talk to one another anymore: they’re all glued to their phones. During the expedition, students don’t have the possibility to look at their phones. In a way, they’re forced to socialize and engage in conversation, and they quickly get a taste for it again!
We were fortunate with the weather over the weekend, which made swimming possible.
Honestly, our group is really, really close-knit. Usually, at college, even at the end of the semester, there are people in my class I’ve never spoken to. Now, I walk into the classroom, and I see everyone, and they’re all friends …
— Jaffar Dounia, a student who was quoted in an article in Le Devoir about the course [in French]
A student putting her balance to the test
Building a stronger teacher-student relationship
In a course like this, the teacher-student relationship is completely different from that in a traditional classroom setting. Sharing more casual moments in life helps to build a valuable connection with the group, serving as a true springboard for motivation and engagement. This positive dynamic, in turn, enriches our work as teachers and inspires the entire team.
I appreciated the warm atmosphere. Having the chance to talk with the teachers made them seem more human and less like people who were just there to grade us.
— A student
Writing in canoes
A true integration rather than 2 parallel courses
One of the factors that made our project easier to implement was that we were able to combine 2 existing courses (rather than having to design a new course framework, etc.). However, even though we were working from 2 different course plans, from the very beginning, we wanted to avoid Literary Expedition becoming simply 2 parallel courses. We didn’t just want to organize a shared outing; we genuinely desired to create a meaningful integration between our 2 disciplines.
At Cégep de Saint-Jérôme, the Literature 102 course, Littérature et imaginaire, is the 3rd course in the sequence and explores Quebec literature from its origins to 1980. Since the course focuses on the imagination and various representations of the world, it is the perfect fit for our project. The selected corpus allows, among other things, for the study of adventure stories or expedition narratives written during the period of exploration by waterways of the territory known as French America.
The canoe-camping course is a Physical Education 103 course. Many students take (or can take) both of these courses at the same time in their program sequence, which made it easier to recruit students. (On a completely different note, the fact that these courses are offered in the 2nd and 3rd year meant that the participating students were somewhat more mature and independent, which simplifies organization and reduces risks.)
In addition, the extra costs associated with the Literary Expedition course (for canoe rentals and bus transportation) are the same as those for the existing canoe-camping course. This simplified the process with the CEGEP administration.
Finally, and most importantly, the fact that all the teachers involved in the project got along very well was obvious and had a positive impact on the atmosphere of the course and the expedition! This is, in fact, a crucial factor in ensuring that the implementation of a multidisciplinary project is enjoyable for everyone, both teachers and students alike.
A key takeaway was how seamlessly we transitioned between canoeing and the literary activities.
— A student
Students’ schedule
Physical education and literature classes shared the same time slots. The literature course is a 60-hour course, while the physical education course is 30 hours. We therefore met with the students for a total of 90 hours during the semester, although the distribution of hours between the courses varied. The 3-day expedition during the Labour Day weekend was counted as 30 contact hours (18 in physical education and 12 in literature). In addition, there were another 5 hours of class per week over 12 weeks, with the course ending slightly before regular courses. The physical education course was taught more intensively before the outing, and the literature course was spread out over a longer period afterward.
Distribution of class hours over the semester |
||
|---|---|---|
| Week | Hours – Physical Education | Hours – Literature |
| 1 | 4 | 1 |
| 2 | 4 | 1 |
| Outing | 18 | 12 |
| 3 | 2 | 3 |
| 4 | 2 | 3 |
| 5 | 5 | |
| 6 | 5 | |
| 7 | 5 | |
| 8 | 5 | |
| 9 | 5 | |
| 10 | 5 | |
| 11 | 5 | |
| 12 | 5 | |
| Total | 30 | 60 |
For the in-college classes, the 42 students were divided into 2 groups of 21, each with Christophe or Olivier as their physical education teacher and Alexis or Vincent as their literature teacher. However, for the field expedition, we co-taught.
The physical education teacher and the literature teacher assigned to the same group of students, were both present in class for the 1st 4 weeks of the semester and shared teaching responsibilities. Then, starting in the 5th week, as the physical education class had finished, the literature teacher continued working with the students on his own.
In the existing canoe-camping course, the outing lasts only 2 days. For Literary Expedition, since we’ve set aside some canoeing time each day to make room for literary activities, we’ve extended the course trip to 3 days, over the Labour Day weekend.
Supervision during the expedition
During the trip, the literature teachers didn’t paddle much with the students, as they often needed to go on ahead to prepare the sites for the upcoming activities.
For safety reasons, it would have been impossible for only 2 qualified teachers to accompany 21 canoes filled with beginner students. Not only would that have been dangerous, but it would also have left too few opportunities for Christophe and Olivier to provide individualized feedback on each student’s technique. To address this, we took along 2 other qualified guides: one a physical education teacher at another college, Zachary Quintal-Duchesne (Collège Brébeuf), and the other, a professional guide, Samuel Deschênes (from the company Plein Air Libre d’Esprit), who has been working with Olivier and Christophe for several years. We were also joined by Zoé Turcotte, a former student now working in outdoor therapy, and François Guénette, a literature teacher and amateur photographer, who volunteered to accompany the group.
We divided the students into subgroups, each with a designated guide. The subgroups progressed at different paces and took turns in completing the literary workshops (sometimes 2 subgroups at a time) as they arrived at the sites where the literature teachers were waiting. We rotated the guides periodically so that every student had the opportunity to receive feedback from all the guides (especially from Olivier and Christophe, since they are their teachers).
It goes without saying that you can’t count hours when teaching a course like this. For example, the expedition lasts 72 hours, but it’s only counted as 18 hours of physical education class time. You really have to love what you do!
Project setup
Getting to know each other
Christophe and Olivier often ran into Alexis at the college, and over the years, they had gotten to know one another. They invited him to serve as a guide for their hiking-camping and canoe-camping courses. At the time, Alexis, who often went canoeing (especially with Vincent and another literature teacher), already had the idea of organizing a canoeing activity with his literature students. By accompanying them, he gained a clear understanding of the physical education courses, the preparation that was carried out with students beforehand, etc. That allowed us to brainstorm as a team how we could align our 2 courses.
Olivier and Christophe are involved in several projects at the college with teachers from different disciplines. In their view, one of the keys to a project’s success is that everyone involved gets along well. After spending time together, we were able to confirm that this was indeed the case and felt confident moving forward!
Presenting the project to our departments and college administration
Christophe and Alexis worked together to create a summary document to present the project to their respective departments and all other relevant college administration bodies (Academic Administration, Academic Advising, and the union). The administration was not at all hesitant and strongly encouraged us to move forward. It must be said that proximity to nature is one of the hallmarks of our region and our CEGEP, and that a project highlighting this was bound to be well received.
We still had to plan for every possible scenario. For example, what happens if a student is injured just before the expedition and can’t go? The answer: they are invited to join another Literature 102 group and another Physical Education 103 group (if possible, the regular canoe-camping course, whose trip takes place a little later than ours). And what if a teacher gets sick? We have designated substitutes in our respective departments.
Safety is obviously a concern during this type of expedition. We bring additional warm sleeping bags in case of cold nights, EpiPens for students with allergies (and we know in advance who might need them), etc. Olivier and Christophe have an evacuation plan in case of an emergency and have completed first aid training for wilderness and remote areas.
Recruiting students
In the previous semester, Alexis visited the Literature 101 classes to present the Literary Expedition project and see if any students might be interested in enrolling. We received over 90 emails from students expressing interest. This enthusiasm helped convince the Academic Advising to give their seal of approval on our project.
The course was open only to students who were enrolled in both Literature 102 and Physical Education 103. In addition, since students in technical programs usually have very full schedules, it was often impossible to fit the 5 hours of our course into their available time slots. That is why we ended up with 42 students who took the course with us.
The course was not listed in the regular registration period; students had to contact us via email to register. Those who expressed interest still had to select a “regular” physical education course during course selection, so that they would have a backup plan in case they were ultimately unable to participate in Literary Expedition.
Field testing
Once we knew the course would be offered in the fall, the 4 of us set out to test the route and scout potential locations for the workshops. We also tried out the literary workshops ourselves, which enabled us to see whether there was a strong enough connection between the assigned work and the environment in which it was carried out.
For Olivier and Christophe, as physical education teachers, having knowledge of the literary activities the students would be doing greatly clarified their vision of the course and enabled them to provide better guidance to the students. This was one of the keys to solidifying the integration of our courses and preventing us from teaching 2 separate classes at the same time.
A travel story as a shared evaluation tool for the 2 disciplines
After the expedition, students were asked to write a travel story about their experience, using a literary approach. They could address their text to anyone they chose and in any tone they liked. For example, one student wrote as if she were a princess who had been kidnapped. Several students addressed their stories to someone who had passed away. One student wrote to her grandmother, who has Alzheimer’s. The results were often captivating and sometimes deeply moving. Christophe found himself in tears twice while grading, which is unusual in physical education! For Olivier and Christophe, it was refreshing to step away from highly structured assignments and reports.
Each student’s travel story was graded by both the literature teacher and the physical education teacher, with each evaluating the aspects related to their own discipline.
In physical education, Olivier and Christophe evaluated:
- Menu planning
Students were divided into teams of 4 or 5, and each person was responsible for planning and preparing at least one meal for their team. The meals had to be planned according to the guidelines covered in class so that they could be safely stored for at least 5 days without refrigeration (for example, through dehydration).
For most students, this was their 1st experience preparing meals of this type. Olivier and Christophe did not evaluate the presentation or taste of the meals, but rather the students’ ability to self-assess their planning process.
- Equipment planning
Before the trip, Olivier and Christophe clearly explained to the students how to select the equipment to be brought along. They did not assess the quality of the equipment once on site; instead, they focused on the students’ ability to reflect on their own choices. - Some technical skills
The physical education teachers had prepared videos demonstrating different paddle strokes, frame by frame, to help students get ready to paddle once they reached the river. Again, it was not performance that was being assessed.
Since the reflective analysis is embedded within a literary story, it can take many different forms, but Christophe and Olivier were able to identify the content relevant to their course. Initially, they had asked students to mark the parts of their text related to the physical education course with a star. However, they ended up reading each story in its entirety, as this enabled them to understand the context better … and also because the texts were fascinating!
The beginning of Marilou Théorêt’s travel story (page 1)
The beginning of Marilou Théorêt’s travel story (page 2)
In physical education, the final evaluation for the course consisted in designing a comprehensive expedition plan tailored to each student’s abilities:
- The types of rivers they would reasonably be able to navigate in the future
- The types of rapids they would be capable of handling
- The distances they would be able to travel each day on a future expedition
- The position in the canoe they could occupy effectively, based on their experience during the group expedition and the types of rapids to be navigated
For the literature component of the course, students had read, before the canoe trip, the account of a priest who explored northern Ontario by canoe with Indigenous people in the 19th century. This multifaceted narrative, combining geography, anthropology, and poetry, could serve as inspiration for the students when writing their own travel story after the expedition.
In Literature 102, the trip itself served as a source of inspiration for the rest of the course. In addition, the texts produced during some of the workshops were supposed to be incorporated into the travel stories. For example, the 2 sentences created in the landscape description workshop could sometimes be included verbatim into the final written assignment. This way, upon returning from the trip, a significant portion of the story could sometimes already be drafted. The 1st task students tackled for the literature portion of the course after the trip was to plan their story, visualizing how the different elements they had produced would fit together.
Later in the semester, the students read (and analyzed) Les engagés du Grand Portage by Léo-Paul Desrosiers, as well as excerpts from works by Félix-Antoine Savard, Jean Désy, Natasha Kanapé Fontaine, and Monique Proulx – Quebec texts in which nature plays an important role.
Breaking down disciplinary silos and stepping outside the classroom
During the expedition, we could really feel the students’ enjoyment of canoeing in the great outdoors, but also of writing their texts during the workshops. The students were fully engaged in their writing. The course grounded literature in a real-world experience and helped give it more value. Meanwhile, combining the canoe-camping course with a literature course added a culturally rich, highly relevant dimension to that too. It was a win-win!
The enjoyment of outdoor activities doesn’t come solely from mastering technical skills; it’s mostly about connecting with the environment. The Literary Expedition project helps students become aware of this connection and put it into words.
— Zachary Quintal-Duchesne, physical education teacher at Collège Brébeuf and guide on our expedition
In fact, in that respect, our project aligns with 2 of the recommendations from the report Regard croisé sur les conditions de réussite éducative sur les premiers cours de littérature et de philosophie [in French] [PDF]:
- taking the goals of general education outside the classroom
- breaking down disciplinary silos
There are many disciplinary silos that could be broken with activities like this. As soon as we returned from the expedition, we immediately started wondering which new discipline we could collaborate with in the future!
An experience to be transferred … without having to aim too high!
What we want to emphasize is that the essence of our experience isn’t in dehydrated food or remote forests. If our project sparks your interest, but you don’t feel ready to spend 3 days away from everything with a group of students, there are still plenty of possibilities that lie ahead! You could organize a day trip with a colleague from another discipline to a park or urban forest near your college, or you could simply dedicate a single class period to an activity outside your classroom.
Why not combine a thermodynamics course with a scuba diving course? A philosophy course with a hiking course? A literature course with a visual arts course?
There are also other formats possible beyond pairing 2 credited courses. For example, one of the physical education courses at our college takes the form of a 2-week hiking trip in Costa Rica. A biology teacher accompanies the group to study the local biodiversity and ecology. This is not an official biology course within the Science program, but it reinforces concepts learned in the Evolution and Ecology course. It is also a golden opportunity to make direct theory-to-practice connections in the field.
In Early Childhood Education (ECE), a physical education course taught by Olivier focuses on cycling tourism and takes the form of an 11-day trip to Denmark. An ECE teacher accompanies the group on visits designed to help students deepen their understanding of the Scandinavian nature-based approach, even though this aspect of the trip is not part of a credited course. This is yet another opportunity to bridge theory and practice, while also enabling students to draw inspiration from different educational models.
What about you? Are you involved in interdisciplinary teaching projects at your college? Do you sometimes teach outdoors, making the most of your surroundings? We’d love to hear about your experiences in the comments section!
