Outdoor Education Adjunct Instructor Sought for Eagle Rock School

Eagle Rock School and Professional Development Center is seeking an experienced outdoor educator who is not only comfortable guiding experiential educational programs in remote backcountry environments for weeks at a time, but who can transfer the confidence and enjoyment gleaned from such experiences to novice teens — many of whom will be experiencing life outside their hometown for the first time in their young lives.

The job title is Outdoor Education Adjunct Instructor, and we’ll tell you up front that one of the most important aspects of this position is helping coordinate our three-times-a-year New Student Wilderness Program that sees incoming students participate in and successfully complete a 24-day wilderness course at the beginning of each trimester.

For that program, the Outdoor Education Adjunct Instructor will facilitate outdoor and on-the-trail instruction to our students, supporting experiences that contribute to their personal and academic growth.

In addition to playing a pivotal role for the New Student Wilderness Program, the adjunct instructor wears many hats back on campus. Among the responsibilities our new staff member will take on are managing and maintaining all of Eagle Rock’s wilderness gear, as well as keeping a close inventory of the food required to support multi-week backcountry adventures. The Adjunct Instructor also supports and facilitates both in class and extracurricular outdoor activities including hiking, rock climbing, mountain biking, canoeing, and Telemark skiing, to name just a few.

The person hired on this role also serves on a house team and as an advisor supporting Eagle Rock School students in their residential and academic experiences on campus.

The successful candidate should be experienced as a lead instructor, possess current Wilderness First Responder (WFR) and CPR certifications, and exhibit strong experientially-based group facilitation skills. Equally important are being adept at more traditional deskwork duties such as assisting with the managing of the Human Performance & Outdoor Education (HPOE) department’s budget, tracking expenditures, coordinating inventory and management of first aid kits and meds, and assisting with ongoing risk management projects and maintaining Eagle Rock’s accreditation from the Association for Experiential Education (AEE).

Additional areas where the successful candidate will play an important role include management and training for our climbing wall, as well as managing our bike shop inventory, and maintaining and repairing all of our outdoor equipment.

Besides being handy with a wrench and toolbox, candidates must be in excellent physical shape — able to carry a 60-pound-plus backpack up steep hillsides and down deep river gorges. He or she must also have a clean driving record and experience driving 15-passenger vans or buses.

Other “musts” include a personality and skillset that enables the successful candidate to work easily with youth from diverse racial, ethnic, and cultural backgrounds, LGBTQ students, and students between 15 and 20 years of age who are not known for their academic engagement and success in a traditional school setting.

Keep in mind: The Outdoor Education Adjunct Instructor’s role is not the same as one may experience in a traditional 9 to 5 job. It includes a lot of evening work, weekend projects and overnight responsibilities. Our new instructor will create and participate in evening activities that enhance our students’ personal and academic achievements.

By accepting the position, you would be making a commitment to become an active member of our academic and campus community, accepting evening and weekend duties, attending community meetings, supporting service projects, and becoming active with one of our residential house teams.

If this sounds like a commitment and lifestyle that might bring you great joy, satisfaction and experience, here’s what we’d like you to do:

Submit a brief cover letter, a resume, a brief skills self-assessment (please see the Outdoor Education Adjunct Instructor Job Listing on our website for the four major areas of responsibility we’d like you to self-assess) and three professional references with phone numbers and email addresses to our Outdoor Education Instructional Specialist — Eliza Kate Wicks-Arshack — via email using eliza@eaglerockschool.org. Clarifying questions can also be sent to Eliza via email.

In terms of timing, we’d like to have our new outdoor education adjunct instructor in place between July and September of this year. That doesn’t mean we’re not flexible about the process. The deadline for applications is May 4, and phone interviews will be conducted between May 7 and 11.

We plan to set up on-campus interviews between May 14 and 18, and again, we can probably work around conflicts to any of these dates.