If you’ve spent any amount of time surfing our website or reading this blog, you know that working at The National Center for Outdoor & Adventure Education (NCOAE) is more than just a job. It’s a reward. Working at NCOAE is a reward for many things, including: superior performance elsewhere; having a keen understanding of…

When it comes to describing the course of study for a school or university, the word “curriculum” is most often used, and it traditionally references all of the courses offered at a particular institution. Curriculum has been described as “a path for students to follow,” which is actually fitting when you think about the backcountry…

If you’re at all interested in a career in outdoor or adventure education and just don’t know where to start, we’re here to tell you that there are whole slew of outdoor education conferences that you can attend – and other things you can do right now – to improve your chance of being hired…

In this day and age, when practically anyone with a Smartphone can publish a video online, we tend to take a lot of things for granted. For example, consider our latest video (see below) for the National Center for Outdoor & Adventure Education (NCOAE). At first glance, this video has all the appearance of having…

There are lots of things that separate the work we do here at The National Center for Outdoor & Adventure Education (NCOAE) from others who offer outdoor education, wilderness trips and wilderness medical training for youths and adults. For starters, unlike other many other outdoor adventure education providers, we operate using a core curriculum that…

In Part 1 of this series, we told you about the unique curriculum offered here at The National Center for Outdoor & Adventure Education (NCOAE) and the fact that its focus is much more than just developing outdoor skills for our students and adult course participants. In addition to teaching how to best use nimble feet…

The novelist, essayist, playwright, poet, and social critic James Baldwin said it best when he wrote: “We are responsible for the world in which we find ourselves, if only because we are the only sentient force which can change it.” Those words guide us here at The National Center for Outdoor & Adventure Education (NCOAE)….

As seasonal hiring for outdoor educators draws to a close, we thought it’d be a good idea to share why it’s so important that outdoor educators use LinkedIn. If you’re unfamiliar with LinkedIn, it’s a professional networking website that allows its members to create and maintain online profiles with resume-like features, including job history, certifications,…

Jena Honeyman was born to teach, but not in the public school system where standardization appears to have removed hope of educating the individual. That’s why Honeyman — a native of Washington State who was raised in the Adirondack Mountains of New York — is a perfect fit for the staff here at The National…

Here at the National Center for Outdoor and Adventure Education (NCOAE), we’re especially proud of our Women’s Wilderness Initiative, which enables women of nearly all ages to ditch the spouse, the kids, the job and the college coursework for a full seven days and — instead of all that — focus on themselves. Notice we…

Come early October, more than 100 seventh and eighth graders — along with an experienced crew of outdoor educators from The National Center for Outdoor & Adventure Education (NCOAE) — will be camping under the stars in Southern California’s Joshua Tree National Park. The only thing missing from this scenario are the outdoor educators, and…

If you look atop our website, you’ll see a unique diamond-shaped icon to the left of our organization’s name, and that new brand mark is, well, brand new to us. The name “brand mark,” by the way, is just another fancy way to say “logo,” and we’re really happy to tell you how we came…

The Wilderness Society — which is way up there near the top of the list for conservation organizations working to protect our nation’s shared wildlands — recently released its list of 20 wilderness areas to see before you die. On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the nation’s Wilderness Act, which protects more than…

If you’re really interested in making the wilderness your home office, there are few programs that can get you started that are as basic and important as our Leave No Trace Trainer Course. Even if you have experience as a wilderness guide or outdoor educator, this two-day training gets you to a point where you…

They say man only needs two tools in life: WD-40 to make things go, and duct tape to make things stop. To that short list, we’d like to add the Banks Fry-Bake Pan — a truly lightweight frying pan that’s perfect for cooking — and baking — in the backcounry. Fact is we take at least one…

It hasn’t been a speedy process but we continue be excited about the deep dive we’re offering up on the curriculum offered here at The National Center for Outdoor & Adventure Education (NCOAE). As you might recall, our last blog post on this topic covered the educational group (Ed Group) topics of feelings identification, levels…

This time around in our continuing series of posts that reveal the people who work here at The National Center for Outdoor & Adventure Education (NCOAE), we’re pleased to introduce the guy who heads our emergency medical technician (EMT) program. Donald Burns coordinates our intensive 19-day EMT-Basic training schedule and everything else that has to…

Starting and completing EMT-Basic training in North Carolina doesn’t have to be a long, drawn-out exercise. It’s now possible — in just 21 days — to obtain the proper training and knowledge to take and then pass the National Registry and the North Carolina state EMT exam. Editor’s Note: This course was previously a 19-day…

It’s a well-known fact that one outdoor education industry standard for trip leaders, wilderness guides and backcountry educators who work on multi-day expeditions, is that you have to have a current and up-to-date Wilderness First Responder (WFR) training. How you satisfy that requirement is up to you. Traditionally, the only way to earn the WFR…

The Outdoor Education industry is abuzz with news this time of the year. What with school almost back in session and the industry’s largest and most influential conferences coming up in just a few months, its no wonder there’s so much outdoor education news to catch up on. In no particular order: There’s a new…