Wilderness Education

Since its founding the Santa Fe Waldorf School has emphasized outdoor education, teaching children to be adventurers and stewards of the land through distinctive wilderness experiences. Program Director Matthew Burritt says this part of our curriculum, "leads students into rich connections with the natural world to help foster connections between people, and most importantly, to oneself."

Rudolf Steiner, the founder of Waldorf education, said that learning about oneself is easier "… in the quiet peacefulness, inner dignity, and charm of nature." With an abundance of wilderness areas within minutes of the campus, SFWS is ideally situated to incorporate the natural world into its curriculum. Class trips occur yearly up through the grades, so that by eighth grade, students may have camped in Chaco Canyon or Bandelier National Monument, climbed Wheeler Peak (the tallest mountain in New Mexico), and may have spent time rafting on a southwestern river among many other adventures, notes Burritt, who also teaches High School math and science and is the co-sponsor of the Class of 2025.

In the High School, he says, students continue their wilderness education through experiences designed to help them develop from the outside inwards, through emphasizing community building and adventure challenges. The program started under the leadership of former SFWS teachers, Karl Johnson and Mary Freitas, in 2001. By 2004, the first senior class was out on solo with the changing aspen leaves and majestic ponderosa pines, says Burritt, and every senior class since has completed the wilderness solo with 2021 marking the seventeenth consecutive trip.

In 2005, ninth and 12th graders started the school year with the tradition of traveling together to the Vallecitos Mountain Retreat Center in the Carson National Forest. Then and now, the senior class welcomes the freshman students into the high school community. Says Burritt, this act of community-building becomes a "mirror" that the seniors use to consider themselves four short years ago, and compare themselves to how they are now. For the ninth graders, the wilderness retreat is an adventure filled with hiking, lessons about self-care, and how to sleep outside, all under the helpful guidance of the senior class with cozy casitas and a beautiful lodge to take the edge off, he adds.

Later in the school year, the ninth-grade students go on a farm trip, which reminds them of their third-grade farm visit, and brings the students closer to understanding the life of a farm and the realities of growing food.

The 10th and 11th graders also travel to Vallecitos in early fall, a tradition that started in 2017, but their focus is on coming-ofage issues and how to make educated choices on topics such as peer pressure, stress, internet/social media exposure, drugs, sexual health, expectations about roles, or body awareness/ shaming, says Burritt. These issues are discussed and chosen by the students and faculty class sponsors before the trip, and are explored through conversation, acting out in skits, and other creative activities. Some discussions are gender-specific with the 10th and 11th grade boys and girls working separately with their respective male and female guides.

In the spring, the tenth grade takes a rafting trip, designed to be full of fun and adventure that allows adolescents to be themselves while testing their capabilities in appropriate challenges against the forces of nature rather than the adults in their lives! Students learn to tie useful knots and to sleep out under a tarp, to hike, and to develop more awareness around self-care, he adds.

In 11th grade, the wilderness program, "asks more from students, and the dynamic shifts from vehicles and boats to carrying one’s provisions on one’s own back—from reliance to self-reliance, from dependence to independence through backpacking," says Burritt. Students and trip leaders head to the Canyonlands of Utah in the spring, and over the course of six days, learn lessons on self-reliance and grit. When they emerge, students are "fledgling" seniors, having gone through a mini-solo in the deep canyons. Students are also guided in leave-no-trace ethics, the importance of gratitude, the gift of listening, of singing together, and of building community.

Seniors, after initiating the ninth graders into their new life in the High School, are consciously led through a threshold experience in which they are given questions to contemplate about their past, present and future, says Burritt. These questions and the 24-hour solo experience are the apogee of the wilderness program, he says, intended to help students foster connections with themselves and to nature as they start their journey as adults.

A particular strength of the program, notes Burritt, rests on its team approach where one person runs the trips and class sponsors follow their classes through the sequence of yearly trips. This allows sponsors to focus on the social dynamics of the class while the details like trip planning, safety considerations, food logistics, gear, and such can be handled by the wilderness team members.

Often, students write about their wilderness experiences in their college application essays, and several alums have returned to help guide trips, reports Burritt. But the most important aim of the program is the exposure of students to the rich complexities of the wilderness around us. "Students form connections with the natural world around them," he says, "and once formed, then a place can be known, and when a place is known it can be loved, and when a place is loved, the seeds are sown for powerful medicine because we protect those places we love."

Grades 10 and 11 hiking during their Coming of Age retreat at the Vallecitos Mountain Retreat Center.