"It is easy to understand that all life is physically connected through our chemical composition… However, it is on the [kinship] level that it is much more difficult, and indeed absurd to some, to contemplate that we share a connection to all life, but we do. This has to be felt and experienced – it cannot be rationalized."
~ Dr. Soren Bondrup-Nielsen
Educationally Exceptional
Authentic Experiences
All-Season Programs for Schools, Going Beyond the Curriculum
Joyous, adventure-filled, experiential, life-changing, and deeply authentic. If we want to deliver the types of educational experiences our students and our planet need, we have to think outside the box.
From beginner-friendly introductory canoe trips and hot tent winter camping; to extended wilderness adventures across all seasons; to in-class programs ranging from beaver pelt mitten making to local ecological knowledge; and everything in between. Our outdoor education programming is custom-designed for the needs of your class, packed with real learning that goes beyond the curriculum.
At Headwaters, we start with the premise of re-imagining the classroom: not only taking students outside, but integrating academic lessons into the world around us. Intentionally building programs that will draw the curricular components out of the natural and cultural landscape.
This is real, high-calibre academic education delivered in an extraordinary way, pushing the boundaries of what learning can – and should – look like.
Viewing research and practice as linked, we partner with schools to develop unique programs, facilitate those programs, and then learn from the results to continually improve and iterate, remaining responsive to today while looking forward to tomorrow.
A southern Ontario based boutique organization with an intentionally small team, we partner with schools across the province. Everything we do is thoughtful, purposeful, and highly personalized to the needs of our partners. Schools get to know us, and we get to know them.
A couple more days spent behind classroom walls isn't going to change our young peoples' lives.
But a few days outdoors just might.
Integrated, Enlivened Education
Breaking Boundaries, Making Meaning
What is it, exactly, that we’re doing when we “do” education? If helping our young people to understand the world in all its details, and to know their role within it, is even but one part of the goal – one part of the mission – then to come home with dirt on their clothes, rocks in their pockets, stories in their head, and awareness in their heart, is a testament to a world discovered.
A world which, over the course of a few days spent with feet on the trail, paddles in the water, and tents under the stars, our students have come to know just a little bit better. To understand that everything is interrelated and, because it is so, that they should search between relations to find the truth. To get at the deep questions, and attempt to uncover the eternal secrets. It’s the type of stuff that can never be distilled into a test nor fully discovered inside a classroom. Yet, when talking about education, we wonder: what more can one ask of a day?
To empower today's students with the knowledge and sense of belonging necessary to lead good lives, enabling a deeply felt relationship with our natural world is a core responsibility of educators. And of education.
It starts with meaningful, intentional, and joyful experiences in natural places. It ends in an empathetic understanding of one's place, and potential, in our world.
The Headwaters Team
As a boutique organization with an intentionally small team, everything we do is thoughtful, purposeful, and highly personalized to the needs of our partners. Schools get to know us, and we get to know them.
With combined decades of experience in outdoor education curriculum development, academic research, and wilderness trip guiding, logistics, and risk management, the Headwaters team brings a unique combination of expertise that sets us apart. Our team has led and overseen wilderness trips in the Northwest Territories; guided Indigenous cultural canoe trips for Québec CEGEPs; worked and conducted academic research at outdoor schools from Ontario to the Yukon; regularly present at conferences, publish papers, and sit on Boards and advisory councils for outdoor educators; hold Master's degrees, teaching certifications, and industry leading wilderness guide qualifications.
Rather than separate the academic researcher, the curriculum designer, the teacher, and the wilderness guide, we bring together these skill sets toward a common cause – developing and delivering extraordinary educational experiences. By putting all of these skills together, in one team, we create a strength of united purpose that is reflected in the quality and uniqueness of our Immersive Credit Courses.
As professionals in outdoor education, we’re aware of the widely varying degrees of exposure, comfort levels, and expected outcomes held by schools, staff, parents, and students alike. Given this dynamic, we strive to have our programs be as customizable as possible, to meet schools where they're at, viewing our relationship with schools less as a third party provider and more as a collaborator in crafting exceptional education opportunities.
"What shall we give the children? Sandhill cranes — surely sandhill cranes. And the sweet whistle of the varied thrush in the morning. Frog calls, owl calls, trumpeting whales. Fresh cold water to drink at the end of a saltwater day. Deep green shade. Starfish, and child's delight in these. Blueberries and potatoes. Safe nights. A sense of decency and fairness that will last them all their lives. Farsighted love."
~ Kathleen Dean Moore