Team Events with School Classes and Youth Groups: What Runs Differently

We have been running events for companies for over twenty years – and alongside that, again and again, for school classes, youth fire brigades, sports clubs and choirs. The most common planning mistake is to treat a class like a small workforce. It is the exact opposite, in four respects, and all four decide whether the day works.

The decisive difference: the group already knows each other

At a company event the starting position is almost always the same: people who only know each other superficially are supposed to get talking. The event builds relationships that were not there before.

In a class or a club everything is already there – including the hierarchies, the cliques and the roles that have been fixed for years. Here the event does not build, it reorders. And that is exactly where it is decided: if the teams are formed the way the group already sits, nothing happens. If the split breaks up the usual groupings, a great deal happens.

So my first question to teachers and club committees is never “which event?” but: who should have talked to whom by the end who normally does not? With youth groups, forming the teams matters more than choosing the format. It should come from the teacher — not from the young people themselves, and not from us, since we do not know the group.

Second: willingness works differently

At a company event the rule is that pressure achieves nothing and most people join in anyway once the first task is running. For a school class, taking part is simply part of the school day – there is not much voluntary about it.

That is not a problem as long as you plan for it. What is quiet refusal among adults is demonstrative standing-around among teenagers. Two things reliably help:

• Hand out roles, not just tasks. Whoever does not want to run can document, calculate or negotiate with the neighbouring team. A well-built format offers more than one way to be useful.
• Small teams. In a group of eight you can hide, in a group of three you cannot. With primary school children we work in teams of three to four – not out of educational theory, but because from five upwards somebody regularly drops out.

Third: attention span beats programme length

Our corporate formats run two to three hours. For adults that is the length after which people have experienced something without attention dropping off. For a class of twelve-year-olds the same span is often an hour too long.

What matters is not total duration but pacing: how long is it between two moments when something happens? On a GPS City Rally that is the gap between two stations. For a class we plan it shorter – more, smaller tasks rather than a few large ones. That is purely a question of how the format is cut, not a different product.

Fourth: the budget is a different order of magnitude

A company calculates per head and compares against the cost of a lost working day. A class fund calculates with what parents find reasonable – an entirely different frame. Anyone who arrives with the corporate price has ended the conversation before it began.

We therefore have our own terms for clubs and schools. I am deliberately not putting a figure here: it depends on group size, format and travel, and an invented sample calculation helps nobody. Tell us the group, the age and the occasion and you will get a real price.

Which format from which age

• From about 8 (primary school): the quiz show in an age-appropriate version, the GPS City Rally as a short format, the Domino Challenge. Simple rules, plenty of movement, short phases.
• From about 12 (lower secondary): additionally Beat the Box, the Team Challenge and archery – the last only with parental consent.
• From upper secondary: the escape formats and the Crime Challenge. These need stamina for reasoning and a certain tolerance for frustration – below that the fun tips over.

For the Highland Games the same applies to youth groups as to companies: it is our most athletic programme. For a mixed group where not everyone wants to join in, the Team Challenge is the wiser choice – there is a separate article on that.

Supervision, consent, insurance

The part teachers always raise first, and which I am deliberately keeping short here because it does not belong in the vague: clarify duty of supervision, supervision ratios and insurance early and in writing – not on the day of the event. Ask us and you will get it in writing.

Four occasions where it works particularly well

• The class outing that should stop being a walk. A tablet format through your own town is more interesting to most classes than a third lap around the same lake.
• The new year-five class. Here, for once, the same applies as with companies: the group does not know each other yet. A great deal is decided in those first weeks – much as with apprentice onboarding.
• The club anniversary. A hosted quiz show with questions about the club's own history works across generations – children and founding members in the same room.
• The last days before the holidays. When the syllabus is done and three days remain.

When we are not the right people

An honest word to finish: we are good at formats for larger groups, with technology, over one afternoon. We are not outdoor education. If you need multi-day programmes, nature as a learning space, educational support over a longer period – then you need somebody with exactly that training.

On Lake Constance we therefore work with ZEBRASTREIFEN in Konstanz. Martina offers outdoor education, team building and guided city walks for schools, clubs and groups there, with a clear focus on nature and supervision. Where that is the better answer, we say so.

Conclusion

A class is not a small company. It already knows itself, it is not there voluntarily, it lasts a shorter time and it has less money. Plan for that and you get an event people still talk about next school year. Ignore it and you get an afternoon where a third of them stand around.

Tell us the group, the age, the occasion and a rough timeframe – we will come back with a proposal.

– René