We are excited to announce our 2014 Instructor Team. For summer 2014, we will have a total of 73 instructors. They average 27 years old, hail from 21 different states and collectively have over 221 years (or over 3 years) of Adventure Treks experience apiece. Over 60% of our 2013 instructors will be returning this year. (Our return rate has exceeded 60% for the past 19 years.) Every instructor has at minimum a Wilderness First Responder medical certification and several instructors are trained as Wilderness EMT’s. All have significant experience working with youth outdoors. Most importantly, they are impressive role models.
Meet Our Instructors for Summer 2013
This video is from Summer 2013 but most of the great folks in this video will also be part of summer 2014!
Eight of our instructors were former Adventure Treks students. Virtually every instructor is a college graduate and thirty percent hold or are working towards an advanced degree. During the rest of the year our instructors are teachers, graduate students, ski instructors, professional ski patrollers, professional mountain guides or work for college outdoor programs or outdoor education and science schools. We have instructors who have biked across the country, paddled the entire Mississippi River, hiked the Pacific Crest Trail or the Appalachian Trail and biked the Great Divide Trail. They have lived, worked and traveled all over the world.
We began with over 600 applicants to hire the 33 instructors who will be new to us this year. Each new hire had three separate interviews, four reference checks and a thorough background check. We are excited to welcome these folks to our Adventure Treks community. They are an impressive group and have much to add to our team. I am excited to watch these outstanding and committed role models inspire our students.
Our senior staff; trip leaders and regional directors begin a four day retreat near Mt Hood in Oregon on June 4th. Our entire instructor team meets north of Portland on June 10th for 7 days of intensive orientation. On June 17th our instructor group breaks into their 6 person staff teams to do an additional week of trip specific training before they greet their students.
Our 2013Adventure Treks Instructor Team
There is something about the camaraderie of Adventure Treks instructors that makes us friends beyond the summer. Being role models, we know that the energy we invest in building close friendships with each other and the kindness and respect with which we treat each other filters down to our students. One of the reasons we have a lengthy orientation is so we can build relationships that will help us work better together during the summer. When we watch our students treat each other with great respect and form close communities, we know we have done a great job modeling.
We will publish tentative instructor assignments to specific trips shortly. Please understand that instructor teams may change as we balance and match the best possible combination of instructor personalities and skills to each Adventure. We are excited for the summer to begin!
Best,
Dock, D-mac, Josh, Holly, Emily, Jan, and Joan
Teach Your Children Well by Madeline Levine is the best parenting book I have read. It offers lots of practical tips and a wonderful perspective. Levine includes recent research to support her points that good grades, high test scores and elite college acceptances are not the endgame we as parents should strive for. Her focus on raising a good kid vs. raising a smart kid will be one of our themes for orientation at both 
In How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character, Paul Tough argues that the qualities that matter most have more to do with character development than academics and testing. How Children Succeed introduces us to a new generation of researchers and educators who, for the first time, are using the tools of science to peel back the mysteries of character. Whereas IQ is hardly malleable, executive function and character strengths – specifically grit, self-control, zest, social intelligence, gratitude, optimism, curiosity and conscientiousness – are far more malleable. Tough posits that these skills are better predictors of academic performance and educational achievement than IQ and therefore ought to be the direct target of interventions.
Coming Apart by Charles Murray is the most powerful book I have read this year. I first discovered this book when an excerpt was published in the Wall Street Journal as a Saturday feature. The excerpt alone created fodder for hours of discussion. I found that the book covered much more ground than ever expected. This book is an invaluable tool towards understanding modern American society and the tremendous divergence we are currently seeing. Drawing on five decades of statistics and research, Charles Murray demonstrates that a new upper and educated class and a new lower class have diverged so far in core behaviors and values that they barely recognize their underlying American kinship. This divergence has grown during good economic times and bad. Murray argues that the powerful upper class, living in enclaves or Super Zips surrounded by similar folks is completely removed with life in mainstream America. Meanwhile the lower class is suffering from erosions of family and community life that is unprecedented in our 200 year history. This divergence puts the success of our country at risk. This is a tremendous sequel to Robert Putnam’s fabulous work, Bowling Alone – the Collapse and Revival of American Community.
