Our flagship program, Full Circle is a unique, transdisciplinary course that combines philosophical work (academic education), a wilderness voyage (outdoor environmental education), and putting learning into action (character education).

The guiding premise of the Full Circle course is that it's a student-directed exploration into the place of nature and wilderness in our world today. With an educator to facilitate and guide the programming, the students select the goals they would like to achieve.

To know oneself is to know the history of one's place: the history of the ecological place and the history of the cultural place. At Headwaters, we refer to this as eco-social history – the combined, overlapping, and inevitably intertwined story of a particular place's natural and human past.

Our first few sessions begin at school, building our own traditional snowshoes or beaver pelt mittens while learning about traditional winter travel in Canada.

We then move to the wilderness, embarking on a 2 night winter camping trip, where we use the tools or clothing we made ourselves to experience all that winter has to offer. Covered in snow, the ecological landscape changes, as does the culture landscape. Through the making of our camp, the telling of stories, and the close participation in ecology and culture, history comes alive.

We are engaged in teaching paddle strokes and portage techniques, in erecting tents and building campfires – the physical stuff of the canoe trip. However, we are about instilling a sense of wonder and unbridled joy for the world; about teaching kids to live with each other, to work together through difficulties and differences; about understandings which come as much through the heart as they do through the head; about building a richness in life constructed from personal meaning, not material possessions; about learning the names of plants, not celebrities; about teaching care and respect for the natural world, one's communities, and oneself; about discovering that we can accomplish far more than we ever knew; about seeing, with our own eyes, the beauty of the world and knowing, with our own hearts, that we belong to it.

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In short, we use the canoe trip because the canoe trip is about good teaching – about the types of experiences which lead to good people.

This program is designed as a companion to high school (grade 11/12) or university courses in environmental science, philosophy, geography, or Canadian studies.

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Mystery on Lake Superior raises ecological, biological, and ethical questions concerning the notion of "invasive" species. Using a role-play style murder mystery game, hilarious costumes, and critical thinking, students will come to a more nuanced and empathetic view of the living beings and ecosystems around them.

This program combines English/language arts, natural sciences, and nature play exploration to facilitate a deep and multifaceted learning experience. Through this program, students will gain a greater understanding and more critical perspective on their role in the larger ecological world. And, through the use of creative language, they will discover how they can take these learnings home with them to integrate into their daily life.

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Poking Around is a perennial favourite, and is a fantastic program to pair with topics such as climate change, poetry, natural history, or civics and community engagement.

With philosophical provocations presented in an interactive, relatable, and fun, yet meaningful and thought-provoking style, this workshop is an ideal starting point for anyone thinking about the state of the natural world in these times of rapid climate change, species extinction, and habitats-turned-parking-lots.

We work with educators, schools, and nature centres to create and facilitate unique custom programs which students will never forget. Weaving across curricular boundaries to develop impactful learning experiences is our specialty, and the natural world is our classroom.

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Whether it be a one-time workshop to enrich your classroom lesson, a short field trip to a local park, or wilderness camping trip in any season, we're excited to working with you to make it happen!

Headwaters develops curriculum-linked, for-credit experiential courses that deliver the Ontario Secondary School curriculum while going beyond the textbook. A canoe trip down the Missinaibi River to earn a grade 11 geography credit; an immersive conservation training canoe trip in Temagami as the culminating assessment of an environmental science credit. This is real, high-calibre academic education delivered in an extraordinary way, pushing the boundaries of what learning can – and should – look like.