Class Trip Intensives

Custom Designed for an Extraordinary Experience Your Class Will Learn From All Year

"Your program is perfect for this age.  It meets the children with just the right kind of skills and activities.   They are learning useful, or potentially useful things- and they realize it!  It is not a meaningless-fun-childish program.  They feel its truthfulness."

-Class Teacher, Seventh Grade, 2006

A journey to Hawk Circle can facilitate many things for a class that simply cannot be duplicated in the classroom or local park. Here in our mountains, students learn to understand their place in the natural world, work with their hands to make authentic crafts, build confidence in making shelters or their own campfires, and connect with each other. Their inner ‘pace’ begins to slow down, and they learn to see, hear, feel and sense in tremendous detail. Foods suddenly have real flavor, and the natural world comes alive in a real and powerful way. The artifice of society drops away, and what is left is true, and solid and full of depth and meaning.

Accompanying the growth in perspective comes appreciation for the group, and a circle of friends and mentors. The opportunities for the group to connect and bond are tremendous. Many class teachers comment that the experiences shared where not only incredible for their classes but also for themselves. Best of all, you don’t need any prior camping or wilderness experience to take advantage of all that we have to offer. You just need a willingness to try new things, a positive attitude and a sense of humor!

Hawk Circle has an excellent safety record, with experienced staff who have years of training and practice both with wilderness skills and guiding youth in the ways of native American survival. The programs work because the skills are real, the situations the students experience is real, and the staff are open and real as well. Class teachers can modify the program to suit the unique needs of their class, in terms of challenge, intensity, crafts, wilderness study, games and group experiences. Each trip is carefully planned after an in-depth interview with the class teacher, followed by a visit to the school for our longer programs to meet the students and parents and answer any questions they might have about the experience, our land, our skills and sense of humor. This takes the pressure off of the class teacher to have all of the answers, and is important to us to see the school and where the students live and study. We pride ourselves in our ability to deliver positive programs that even the most reluctant students will enjoy. Our kitchen and menu is highly rated by students and adults alike, and our facilities are inspected and approved by the thorough and rigorous New York State Department of Health. We have an extremely low tick presence (we find, on average, one-two ticks per year, total!) which is an important health and safety consideration for many parents and school officials. Combined with low to no poison ivy, we find that our trips are more enjoyable, too!

Our programs have developed through a deep spiritual foundation that is understated, based on the belief that true spiritual awareness grows through listening to one’s heart and time spent in nature. We have no dogma and no agenda, except to awaken our senses and focus on being present and appreciative of the gifts and wonder that is life.

We aim to partner with you and your school to help your students achieve a closeness to nature that will change the way they see and feel about the earth, themselves and the world.

Enjoy the contents and please feel free to call us if you have any questions.

-Ricardo Sierra

"When we arrived in the bus, I think we all knew that it would be an exciting week.  Day after day we all learned something new.   We would never have learned these skills without you!  Thank you for everything."

-Rudolf Steiner School, Seventh Grade student