Apprenticeship Curriculum: Learning Beyond the Edge of Education

The Core Curriculum

  • Wilderness training: Tracking and awareness, survival techniques (i.e. fire making, shelters), blending with nature (i.e. camouflage, stalking), naturalist skills (i.e. plant identification and use, research), and profound integration with and respect for the natural world.
  • Mentor training: Developing mentoring skills including leadership, creativity, storytelling, charisma, integrity; encouraging the discovery and development of your unique gifts and sharing them with others.

Earth Skills & Naturalist Training

Whether knee-deep in a swamp of chorusing frogs or on the trail of a predator carrying a kill, your awareness and survival skills will grow far beyond what you thought possible. Apprentices are immersed in the experience of:

  • Naturalist Studies
  • Animal Tracking
  • Ethnobotany
  • Primitive Fire Making
  • Wilderness Cooking
  • Bird Language
  • Sensory Awareness
  • Aidless Navigation
  • Shelter Building
  • Scouting and more!!

Kamana Naturalist Training Program

The first three years of your apprenticeship will include the research and awareness study program known as Kamana. This highly personalized exploration of the natural world is a perfect blend of art and science, and a rigorous academic component to the highly experiential Apprenticeship Program. As a Kamana student, you will complete 2000 hours of documented research, exercises and journaling that can be submitted for college credit. As a Kamana graduate you will have an in depth understanding of the species and habitats of your bioregion as well as an internal map for guiding others through the same journey of native awareness.

National Instructors and Events

Throughout the year the Vermont Wilderness School hosts native elders and respected teachers who share ancient mentoring traditions that have stood the test of time. We also host several national conferences that influence the direction of the national Art of Mentoring movement. Past workshops include:

  • The Vermont Art of Mentoring and Youth Rendezvous.
  • "Walking a Sacred Path" with traditional Lakota Elder, Gilbert Walking Bull.
  • "Protecting the Sacred Fire" with Odawa Peacemaker, Paul Raphael
  • "Mentoring Strong Naturalist Communities" with Master Tracker Jon Young.

Our Winter Expedition has featured skiing across several miles of open lake during the day, sleeping in a snow cave at night and tracking predators long distances over the snow. This powerful experience is a mid year lab in outdoor leadership skills and winter ecology.

Art of Mentoring Training

The Art of Mentoring will provide you with the skills you will need to help your students become lifelong learners in a dynamic educational culture. Our combined study of modern brain research and ancient native techniques will give you insight into how human beings learn best. Apprentices will learn to apply this comprehensive system of inspiring and motivating, students during the Wilderness Rites of Passage and Oyase Community School programs for children.

Wilderness Rites of Passage

Vermont Wilderness School recognizes the adolescent need for safe, healthy challenges, not only for their growth but for societyÕs benefit as well. You will learn to guide 7th and 8th graders from nearby Waldorf Schools through three levels of wilderness immersion programs. These are intense multi-day challenges designed to give students the confidence to deal with the many unknowns of teenage and adult life. These programs help our Apprentices practice invaluable outdoor leadership and mentoring skills while learning to facilitate intensive field experiences for groups.

Oyase Community School

The Oyase Community School is an integral part of the Apprenticeship program. Oyase is a weekly immersion experience for students ages 6-18 in the ancient art of mentoring. Vermont Wilderness School Apprentices work as a group to create a "cultural basket" of naturalists, elders, storytellers, trackers, birders, herbalists, warriors, and mentors that stimulates the imagination and awareness of the children. Long-term community relationships and nature awareness are woven artfully together. The result is children with advanced abilities in nature observation, environmental caretaking, and wilderness survival. Apprentices gain the enormous satisfaction of mentoring children into a thriving and vital connection with the natural world.

Next: Apprenticeship Program Details

Download the the Apprenticeship Program application. (Adobe Acrobat PDF Format)
Or contact the Vermont Wilderness School for more information and to schedule an interview.