Homeschool Nature Program for Teens Community School

We have a lot of fun in nature, a refreshing change from regular life where you can just let go of whatever else is going on and just relax and have a good time.... and be aware and connected with the earth, I feel comfortable there.-Rutah, age 14

Spring Visit Day: Tuesday, April 6, 2010. See the Vist Days Flyer for more details. NOTE: You need to register for visit days with our office: 425-788-1301 or email lindsayh@wildernessawareness.org

Our Mission

The Mission of the Wilderness Awareness Community School is to create an educational environment that helps homeschooled teenagers engage their natural intelligence and awakens their innate abilities to perceive and connect with the world around them.

Our students immerse themselves in intensive, experiential studies of nature from both scientific and indigenous perspectives. In this effort, our students are instructed and supported by a large, diverse community of mentors from all ages and walks of life.

Why Study Nature?

For millions of years, humans have lived in direct contact with the natural world, and our senses developed to attend to its rhythms and sounds.

It is only in the last couple of hundred years that we have insulated ourselves from nature with things like buildings and cars and pavement. One unfortunate result of this separation is that our senses atrophy from lack of use. With no reason to pay attention to birds, we don't even see them as they fly by. We don't hear the deer or raccoon as they sneak away through the bushes. And we slowly grow deaf to our own intuition and instincts which guide and connect us to the world.

Our goal at Wilderness Awareness Community School, our teen wilderness course for homeschoolers, is to reawaken this deep awareness of nature in our students.

What happens when young people expand their awareness of the world around them and pay attention to their inner voice, their intuition, and their heart is truly remarkable.

These students gain an understanding of the natural flow of things that puts them in better balance with themselves and the world around them. As their confidence grows, they find themselves firmly on the path towards developing into physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually centered people.

Teaching through Mentoring

Staff at the Wilderness Awareness Community School consider themselves Mentors rather than Teachers. Thus their role shies away from lecturing students about facts they should know, and instead emphasizes helping students to find their interests and gain the skills to question, investigate and explore the world around them.

The art of mentoring is a delicate dance, and every student presents unique gifts and challenges to our staff. As a result, close personal attention is crucial for successful mentoring.

The school is also supported by a larger community made up of amateur and professional naturalists, artists, crafts people, teachers, elders, and young people.

These people volunteer time to teach classes and mentor our students. In this way, the entire community of people, plants and animals serve as the real teachers of our students.

In the past, we have had herbalists work with us to harvest and prepare medicinal plants, crafts people teach us to prepare fleece and make felt blankets, and carvers teach us some of the traditional carving and basketry techniques of the Northwest Coast Native Peoples.

Our Curriculum

Our approach to studying nature combines modern scientific understanding with the more first-hand connections that ancient cultures had with the natural world. Over the course of a year, our teen wilderness course focuses on many topics, including:

• Wilderness Living Skills
• Mammals and Tracking
• Birds and their Languages
• Plants and their Uses
• Aidless Navigation
• Native Cultures
• Trees and Survival
• Ecology and Community

At Wilderness Awareness Community School, we explore these topics using a powerful, comprehensive curriculum. We begin our inquiries experientially, taking students into the natural world where they can see, smell, hear, and feel the subject matter.

To this experiential understanding we add a cognitive component as our students research the current topic through books, field guides, videos, lectures and other resources.

Students may become skilled naturalists and master trackers by the end of their time with Wilderness Awareness School (our curriculum is designed for it!), yet ultimately our goal as a school is something far simpler, yet much more elusive.

What we aim to create are not naturalists or trackers, but centered, healthy, self-motivated young adults, able to think critically for themselves, with the confidence and inspiration to dream a vivid vision of their own future, and the skills and enthusiasm to pursue that vision.

To Apply

Please call our office to apply:  425-788-1301.