Build Your School Community
High Trails is a wonderful place for schools to build their community early in the school year during the formative stages or to celebrate and reinforce curriculum learned throughout the year. Some schools use the time at High Trails to reinforce the character education skills taught in the classroom and some districts mix students from different schools to bring together families across a geographic region with a common experience. High Trails offers many intentional programs used to encourage student cooperation and communication, although most community building is a direct consequence of learning how to live together in a new place.
It is important to us that when students are at High Trails, they figure out how to be a good friend to someone else and how to see their teachers and classmates from a new perspective. Many families take opportunities to spend time outside camping, fishing or skiing, but it is truly unique for an entire class of students to participate in a shared educational experience of this nature.
Using nature as a guide for building community...There are many lessons about relationships we can learn by using natural systems as a model. Studies have shown that as we spend time in the natural world, we are more able to build close, meaningful connections with other individuals and with the community as a whole. Learning the value of the natural world helps us to realize the importance of our connections with each other.
In the cabins...The residential experience at High Trails creates a community in which students learn how to work with and for others in their group, decide when to lead and when to follow, and experience shared adventures in the outdoors. Students take responsibility for the condition of the cabin and develop cooperative skills. Teachers live in the 'teacher room' of the cabin, which allows for close supervision of students as well as a new teacher-student bond.
In the discovery groups...Students have more opportunities in the mixed-gender Discovery Groups to forge new friendships while learning in small cooperative units, investigating the local trees or exploring the landscape. Learning and sharing the wonders of the world we live in strengthens student bonds and creates lifelong memories. Students who are not the high achievers in a typical classroom often shine while on the trail, and their peers can recognize and celebrate their strengths.
Evening programs...The Nature Carnival at the Interbarn uses station-based learning to reinforce the concept that all living and non-living things are interrelated. By seeing how they are connected to the Earth, kids become more aware of their own interpersonal relationships. The Folkdance is a fun and engaging, old-time, no pressure hoe-down led by the High Trails staff, who use stories and silly songs to facilitate a crazy good time!
In the lodge... The High Trails Able Waiter Society and family-style meals make the High Trails lodge a place for good conversation and friendship. At each meal, students from different cabins eat early, are trained in proper Able Waiter etiquette by a staff member, and then serve and help clear the meal. Students take this work assignment seriously, and Able Waiting is often a highlight of the week. Food at the tables is passed around so that each student gets enough for one serving, and then the table asks for a refill from the Able Waiter. Students at the tables learn to be considerate and polite, and high school leaders at the heads of each table supervise the meal for their cabin group.
The High School Leadership Program...is one way younger students who attend High Trails are able to develop new friendships with mentors from their local high schools. High school leaders live in the cabins, are assistant teachers in the discovery groups, help out in the kitchen and are paired with High Trails staff and teachers to help deliver the program. It is often the high school leaders who have the greatest impact on students!
