Outdoor Education: Mission and Core Values

Experience
Greenkill Outdoor Environmental Education Center has been operating safe and quality school programs for more than three decades.  Imperative to the continuing success and growth of the program, the Greenkill outdoor education staff strives to update and develop innovative activities which reflect current trends and issues facing human and natural communities at all level of spatial scale.

Mission
Our day to day program is organized to offer all students an outdoor educational experience in which they learn to understand the interrelationships of their classroom group as well as many of the important interrelationships that occur among the plants and animals found in our natural communities. 

Students will learn about the human to human interrelationship through team building and challenge education activities and activities associated with a residential program, such as living and dining in a common area.  Through the observation and interpretation associated with our environmental science, history, and outdoor skill classes students will learn about nature to nature and human to nature interrelationships.  Finally on the last day, students may have the chance to review all they have learned through a mock Town Meeting.  At the conclusion of the students’ stay, it is our hope that they will use their new awareness of the above stated interrelationships as a factor in their decision-making process.

Goals, Objectives and Core Values:

• To build a foundation for understanding the interrelationships occurring in the world.
• To provide empirical and/or experiential opportunities through hands-on exploration of our 1,000 plus acre classroom.
• To cultivate knowledge and understanding of the natural environment in order to set the foundation for developing a sense of:
  • Caring and responsibility for the natural environment at local, regional, and global levels.
  • Respect for the processes that occur in nature and what they allow humans to do.
  • Honesty of our dependence on nature to meet our needs and wants.