This spring, the Community Adventure Program (CAP) at New Vista High School had many amazing outdoor experiences! Each adventure built upon the last, as the students grew into competent and excited outdoor enthusiasts. On most Friday afternoons throughout their few months together, CAP class headed to the nearby trails at the base of the Flat… Read more »
The sun peaked in on the Cottonwood Institute instructors as they trekked up the steepest part of the hike to Francie’s Cabin, near Breckenridge, CO. Within minutes the temperature change took them from cold to sweating, shedding their early morning layers. A short time later they broke into a clearing just below the hut, revealing… Read more »
I really get fired up about our work because we are addressing two really important issues in our community: So many kids along the Front Range see the mountains every day and either never have been to the mountains, don’t have access to the outdoors in terms of gear or transportation, or don’t have positive… Read more »
Eight months ago, Cottonwood Institute embarked on a new journey, Mini CAP, with a group of sophomores from FAST Tracks, a dropout prevention program at Lakewood High School. Mini CAP is a spin off of our core curriculum at New Vista High School in Boulder, the Community Adventure Program. We took our CAP curriculum and… Read more »
CAP students were quite busy this quarter. Before their first overnight they learned about camp setup, packing their bags, proper camp nutrition, and basic outdoor overnight essentials. Most of them already had a great deal of camping experience for high schoolers. Or so they said, as they arrived for the overnight with overstuffed backpacks –… Read more »
Last February, Earth Task Force (ETF) students and staff, co-wrote a grant application for the National Environmental Education Foundation’s (NEEF) Green Prize Award. The Green Prize is a national contest for schools across the country with a prize of $10,000 to help fund the winning schools’ sustainability efforts. In 2011, over 100 schools from around… Read more »
The Cottonwood Institute’s educational philosophy is based upon two major tenets: environmental education and service-learning. We wanted to take the opportunity to define these and other pedagogical approaches and techniques used to teach our educational programs. These definitions offer a very broad explanation to complex terms, but attempt to synthesize these key terms into understandable… Read more »
