The Wilderness Classroom started with a simple idea: to improve students’ core academic skills and appreciation for the environment by introducing elementary and middle school students to the wonders of exploration and wilderness travel.
Eighteen years and over a dozen expeditions later, the Wilderness Classroom is a 501(c)3 that reaches over 3,200 teachers and 100,000 students around the globe each year.
Our mission has never changed. We seek to instill a lifelong appreciation of the natural world while improving basic skills like reading, critical thinking and communication by highlighting the joy of discovery.
Since it is usually unfeasible to load a classroom of 4th grade students onto a plane and fly them to remote locations, we use a combination of interactive internet-based learning tools on our website, and virtual school assemblies to accomplish our mission.
School Assemblies
Our School Assemblies are delivered by National Geographic Adventurers of the Year, Dave and Amy Freeman. The Freemans have been delivering impactful and engaging virtual assemblies since 2013 and work with tens of thousands of elementary and middle school students through virtual assemblies each.
The Freemans are experienced speakers and educators who have entertained and inspired audiences of all ages through more than 1000 presentations over the last two decades.
They combine stunning images and videos with riveting accounts of their epic journeys to remote locations across the globe. The Wilderness Classroom’s primary audience is elementary and middle school classrooms, but presentations are routinely tailored to fully engage a variety of audiences including, K-12 schools, colleges, libraries, and conferences. The Freeman’s generally use Zoom or Google Meet, but they are happy use which ever video conferencing technology your school or organization prefers.
Educational Expeditions
Most years the Wilderness Classroom designs and undertakes several educational expeditions in remote locations around the world. Plus we partner with other explorers and travelers interested in sharing their experiences with classrooms.