Fifty-seven Interpersonal Skills students piled into a bus early Wednesday morning for a field trip to Camp Wood.

Interpersonal skills is a class that Manhattan High offers to special ed students as well as seniors.

The field trip allowed students to bond and get the mentees acquainted with all of the new senior mentors. The IPS students participated in four activities throughout the day: horseback riding, archery, team-building games and climbing a 50-foot-tall wall.

The class was split up into groups throughout the day, but at the end they all came together for dinner and a dance party.

“We made a circle and the kids would go in and dance, and it was really fun,” senior mentor MacKenzie Gwinner said. “Everyone was so supportive and all there together and during the day and, like, split up into different groups so it was fun to all be together.”

The students had the opportunity to cook their own dinner, which ended up being a taco bar, and also clean up after themselves. Although cleaning up can be a tedious task at times, the students found a way to make the best of it.

“It allowed us to bond together a little more and we had a lot of fun doing it, too — especially the clean up at the end,” senior mentor Wesley Whitney said. “We all started singing different Disney songs or whatever anybody wanted to sing.”

The class gives seniors a chance to make a difference in the lives of the special ed students. It also gives the special ed students people outside of their small community to connect to.

“It’s pretty fun. [My favorite part is] getting to meet new people and venturing out instead of staying in my shell and talking to people instead of being the outcast who just sits there and be quiet,” junior mentee Amissa Self said.

To be an IPS mentor, students applied as a junior and went through an interview process.The selected students get to spend a class period each day, along with time outside of school, bonding and becoming friends with special needs students at MHS.

“I’d always heard everyone talk about how fun it was to really get to know the kids in it,” Whitney said. “Everything thing like that and I thought about doing things after high school and college with kids so I thought it’d be a fun experience to see if I really liked it. I like it a lot.”