Archive for the ‘Outdoor Education’ tag
NOLS, The Outdoor Backpack Leadership School
If you ever think about learning more about the outdoors and perfecting your outdoor backpack skills, think no more, take a class at NOLS. NOLS stands for National Outdoor Leadership School. It’s a non profit educational organization that teaches people of all ages technical outdoor skills, leadership and environmental ethics. And all this in “natures classroom”, meaning that their courses are given in nature itself around the world.
NOLS was founded in 1965 by mountaineer Paul Petzoldt. The courses that they offer range in length from 10 days to a full academic year and are pointed at people that want to learn how to lead. The way they try to accomplish that is the learn-by-doing approach that teaches students competence and responsibility that will last a lifetime. If you take a look at the website of NOLS you will find that they have a wide variety of courses to offer, all around the world. Just to name a few courses: Backpacking, mountaineering,rock climbing and wilderness medicine. Natures classrooms are located in the United States, Australia, South America,India and Scandinavia.
Some of the skills that are thought on these courses are leadership outdoor skills, learning to work effectively in a group and all of the technical skills that are required when you are out in the wilderness. These courses are given to you by highly experienced and motivated instructors with a love for the outdoors. There are many more things to see and learn from the NOLS website, you can visited them at NOLS.edu. I’ve embedded an introduction video from them below. If you want to learn how to become a leader, or take your outdoor backpack skills to a higher level, NOLS is certainly the place to find that.
As one of the students says in the video:“I wrote a letter home to my parents, trying to explain what I’ve been doing every day. I told them what we’ve been eating and where we’ve camped every day. I can describe all those things to my parents. What i struggled with was how to tell my parents what it meant for me to be able to do all these things.. and.. there are hardly words to describe what it’s like to wake up every day and think: something crazy cool is going to happen today!”
To me that just says it all, have fun everyone!