Walking into camp, many of the students have never slept away from home before, so as a Cabin Instructor your first priority is to provide a warm and comfortable atmosphere in which the students can open up and be themselves. After every day of camp they will come back to the cabin, excited to tell you everything about their day and even more excited for the things they know you have in store for them. You will teach them games, tell them stories, help them to create arts and crafts projects, and even work on their line dance steps with them. You will help them get ready to take showers, talk them through being homesick, and wake up with them in the middle of the night when they don't feel well. You will help them come up with a skit for campfire, and then watch as they step in front of the entire camp, overcome with stage fright. You will sit with them in the evenings and facilitate discussions that allow them to open up with one another, to trust one another, and to believe in one another. Every bit of your time as a Cabin Instructor is packed full of things to do; classes like nighttime wildlife and astronomy fill your evenings, and there are always more New Games to play. You can see a sample schedule here.
HARD WORK AND INSERVICES: 20% OF YOUR TIME
With your classes, the objectives and vocabulary are set and ready for your own individual teaching style. You've got to prepare lesson plans for each class you teach, so be ready to be organized and prepared for your classes. We provide most of the equipment for you, from bug boxes to compasses and field guides. But you will have to make your own small props for your classes, the things that make the class yours and give you ownership in what you are doing and teaching. A good part of teaching comes from preparing before you even get your first group, so be ready for the work involved in being a Field Instructor. You can see more details on classes, objectives and vocabulary here.
Every school that comes up to High Trails is doing so because they want their students to learn two things; the importance of nature and how to interact positively with the community around them. During the day your primary focus is on nature, how we affect it, how we can responsibly enjoy it, and how we can share it with others. The students coming up here get to experience things they have never seen or done before, from their first arrow actually hitting the archery target to peering into a magnified bug box and seeing firsthand the different parts of an insect they caught. Your job during the day is to teach, in new and exciting ways, drawing the students to your words, encouraging them to catch your energy and passion for the environment and this world.
THE CABINS: 40% OF YOUR TIME
A large part of of your time at High Trails will be spent as a Cabin Instructor. This means that from 5pm until 10 am the next morning, you are in charge of a cabin of students. After you drop your students off in the morning, there's cleaning to be done. You are generally off duty by 10:30 am, and don't have to be back at work until 5pm. While the days are focused primarily on Adventure and Environmental based classes, the cabins are a time to open up the boundaries that normally exist within an elementary school social system and work on the community aspects of life.
Being a Cabin Instructor gives you a good chunk of time off during the day, to enjoy the weather, relax, take care of errands, and get some exercise. But as the day wanes it is up to you to make our visiting students experience here at High Trails a truly great one. As the week progresses you will be their parents, their teachers, their older siblings, and most importantly, their friend. At the end of the week, it's the Cabin Instructors that get the biggest hugs.
We make the mess, and we clean it up. From toilets to vacuuming to mopping and scrubbing, this is true dirty work. You'll also have a project area; this is a small slice of program that is yours to take care of and maintain. Projects areas consist of things like archery and climbing equipment, taking care of the dining hall, organizing the recycling program, maintaining class experiments, and more. We've also got random projects during the year; though you won't be doing advanced carpentry, staff have been known to split firewood, lay carpet, rake tons of pine needles, build campfire amphitheaters, clear and construct trails, paint cabins...the list goes on.
Be prepared to see, and work on, just about every aspect of a program, from the glamorous and fun to the dirty and necessary. It's part of running a small business.
We have two types of days; adventure days, where you will teach climbing, archery, low initiative courses, orienteering, and more. Environmental days are more class oriented with topics like plants, water, outdoor survival, and the like. With a 5 day program, there are generally two environmental days and one adventure day. The arrival day is more of an introduction and teambuilding day, and the departure day is more of a debrief day. You can see a sample schedule here.
The Instructor
Let's start at the beginning: schools generally come to High Trails during the school week, which means you show up for program on Monday at 8am and are finished around 5pm on Fridays. Weekends and traditional holidays mean no elementary school, which means no program for us. Thank goodness...because the rest of your time will be split between the Field, the Cabin, and that "still work but no kids around" time that we spend on Hard Work and Continuing Education.
THE FIELD: 40% OF YOUR TIME
After we work your body, we're going to work your brain. Time has taught us that if we want you to be a good teacher, we've got to start the process ourselves by giving you honest feedback on how you are doing and then providing you the tools you need to get better. We have two comprehensive 9 month long continuing education courses that utilize inservices and evaluations. Twice a week we'll have inservices, starting off with simple themes like basic medical conditions and discipline strategies, and working into harder topics like making decisions in the field and advanced classroom management. You're guaranteed one full evaluation for each Fall, Winter, and Spring season. Full evaluations are detailed observations, write-ups, and discussions of how you are teaching now and what you can do to get better. We'll also delve into how you are doing in the community, as this is a vital part of life at High Trails. Thrown into the mix as well are Flash Evaluations, which are quicker and shorter evaluations, making certain you get a sit down check in with administration on a regular basis. Put it all together and you have a good recipe for becoming a great teacher.
It's awful hard to really have that balance in your life when you work in outdoor education. We try to give you a good deal of time off, but inevitably you are going to work a lot. Making it all worth it is our investment in you; hard work will get you dirty and real, and make certain you are grounded for the realities of life ahead. Continuing education will give you the resources and attention you need to become the kind of teacher you want to be; you will become as much as you put in. Kind of like life itself....
