As The National Center for Outdoor & Adventure Education (NCOAE) has grown, so have the skills and knowledge of our expertly trained and credentialed staff members. Take Wesley Hawkins, WFR, for example; a young man who grew up in the Southeast and eventually landed in Georgia where he attended Georgia College and State University. Majoring in outdoor education with a minor in business administration, Wesley was given a class assignment that brought him to NCOAE for a site visit back in 2014. That trip resulted in Wes becoming an NCOAE intern, assisting with our outdoor programming, and ev ..read more

This is the last post in our four-part series on trends to be aware of in outdoor and adventure-based experiential education. In Part 1, we covered DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion). Part 2 focused on restorative practices. And Part 3 called attention to trauma-informed learning.  Here in Part 4, we’re wrapping up the series with a call for action about stewardship. According to research from Pennsylvania State University’s Department of Recreation, Park, and Tourism Management and the Leave No Trace Center for Outdoor Ethics, 13 percent of people who regularly participated in outdo ..read more

In EMS (emergency medical services) education, generations of students have been taught to put safety first.  “Don’t enter a scene if it’s not safe,” is what all EMS students are told.  “Your safety is most important,” we say. “If you don’t feel safe, get out.”   That being said, there’s another concept called “Safety Third” that’s become popular in recent years, claiming that it’s really up to the individual — not the institution — to ensure their safety on a continual basis. For more details about this, please read Safety is Third, Not First, and We All Know It Should Be ..read more

If you asked me to list the attributes that allowed Sir Ernest Shackleton’s Trans-Antarctic Expedition (1914-1917) to survive more than a year stranded in Antarctica, I point to characteristics like leadership, adaptability, teamwork, ingenuity, and perseverance.  What Shackleton and his men employed was a mindset that intentionally embraced a set of values and behaviors that are essential for success and survival in extreme conditions. Here at The National Center for Outdoor & Adventure Education (NCOAE), we refer to that as having an expedition mentality (and I’ll have more to say a ..read more

Time warp yourself back to early-February of 2020. We were a month into a new decade when news broke that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security had directed all flights from China be routed through one of 11 airports in the United States for enhanced screening procedures and possible quarantine.  A few months later, just as our nation’s students were preparing to end another school year, our country found itself in virtual lockdown.  While students of all ages may experience loneliness, anxiousness, and uncertainty, the global health pandemic caused by the virus named “SARS-CoV-2 ..read more

A few weeks ago, we published Part 1 of this series, which covers what we here at The National Center for Outdoor & Adventure Education (NCOAE) view as the trending best practices to know about in outdoor and adventure-based experiential education.  Here, in Part 2 of this series, we introduce you to Restorative Practices, and share how they’re incorporated in the programming here at NCOAE. For Part 3, we will shift our attention to Trauma-Informed Learning. And we’ll wrap up the series in Part 4 with a discussion on Stewardship. At NCOAE we recognize the power of the outdoors ..read more

Outdoor and adventure-based summer camps for teens provide a life-enriching and world-changing experience for those who participate in them. These experiences, offered by accredited adventure-based experiential and outdoor education providers like The National Center for Outdoor & Adventure Education (NCOAE), offer a unique opportunity for teens to develop personal competencies in the following four areas, as well as technical outdoor skills that will last a lifetime: Self Community Action Impact Or, as we here at NCOAE prefer to present it: Self + Community + Action = Impact This form ..read more

Outdoor and adventure-based summer camps for teens provide a life-enriching and world-changing experience for those who participate in them. These experiences, offered by accredited adventure-based experiential and outdoor education providers like The National Center for Outdoor & Adventure Education (NCOAE), offer a unique opportunity for teens to develop personal competencies in the following four areas, as well as technical outdoor skills that will last a lifetime: Self Community Action Impact Or, as we here at NCOAE prefer to present it: Self + Community + Action = Impact This form ..read more

A little more than three decades ago, two educators and researchers from Canada partnered with the Association for Experiential Education (AEE) on a groundbreaking book titled Safety Practices in Adventure Programming.  Simon Priest, Ph.D., and Tim Dixon, M.Ed., regarded at the time as among only a handful of leading experts in outdoor adventure education and leadership, penned what some argue was the first widely-published best practices for the outdoor education and adventure programming industry.  Known as the Red Book, due to its bright red cover, their work coincided with AEE’s ..read more

It’s been more than a decade since the National Registry of Emergency Medical Technicians (NREMT) stopped using the certification designations EMT-B and EMT-Basic.  The change from EMT-B to EMT was not just in title. It was accompanied by an expanded set of knowledge and skill expectations for emergency medical technicians (EMTs). There is nothing “basic” about what an EMT learns or the skills he or she can perform. And they’re certainly not “Ambulance Drivers.” (Photo Credit: RODNAE Productions | Sourced from Pexels) Most states have made the transition to the new title, but many emergen ..read more