Volunteer Opportunity Summary:
The Heart-J Center provides k-12 students the chance to get out of the classroom and immerse themselves in fun and challenging activities that embrace natural history, outdoor skills, art, leadership skills, team building and more. In general, the activities we offer for outdoor ed field trip are customized to meet the needs of each group, however, we’re looking to balance group needs with offering activities based on the interests and strengths of our volunteers. Therefore, if you have a particular area of interest that you don’t see listed in the application, let us know and we’ll see if it might be a good fit for some of our programming!

During our spring/fall outdoor ed seasons, we offer programs for groups up to 300 k-12 students (most are middle school and high school students). A more typical group size is 70-80 children, staying onsite for between 3-6 hours. For programming, we split the visiting students into smaller groups of 10-25 children, where the groups then rotate through activities led by our volunteer educators.

We usually offer between 4 - 6 activity themes for each outdoor ed day (i.e. hiking, wildlife talk, archery, eco-art, challenge course, river ecology, etc.). Depending on group size, activity sections can last anywhere from 25 to 55 minutes before the next group rotates in.

With the guidance of the HJC program manager, volunteers are responsible for designing and delivering their own programming. Volunteers must be self-directed, have strong organizational skills, and have the ability to execute a plan. With that said, the groups are fun, the stakes are pretty low and our outdoor ed programming offers the perfect setting to develop and hone your skills as a educator, facilitator, and leader!