The Outdoor Academy is an academic semester school for high school sophomores, and select juniors, who are looking for academic success and personal enrichment. Our students experience hands-on learning in an academic community centered on a deep connection to nature, lasting relationships with one another and the excitement of living in a challenging atmosphere.
Academic Program
We take full advantage of our setting in the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. Classes are taught in a traditional classroom setting, as well as next to streams and in the forest. As part of our outdoor program, our students take part in hiking, paddling, backpacking, caving and rock climbing. Through our interactive approach to education, our exploration of the natural world and our strong sense of community, students become fully engaged in the learning process, gaining a new sense of respect for the environment, for others and for themselves.
The Outdoor Academy is a structured, yet active and fun-filled, semesterlong academic adventure. If you are curious about the world you live in, don’t mind working hard in the outdoors, are eager to take responsibility for yourself and others, and are yearning for an intellectual and personal challenge, we hope you will apply. Outdoor Program
When you have a 180-acre classroom, new experiences and activities await you every day. That is why we fold every part of our landscape into the academic curriculum. Our corner of the woods is surrounded by some of the country’s greatest natural treasures and one of the most diverse ecosystems on earth. Groups routinely take trips to:
- Looking Glass Rock, a famous site for rock-climbing
- Blue Ridge Parkway’s Folk Art Center, rich with Appalachian history and arts
- Cradle of Forestry, home of America’s first forestry school
- Pisgah Center for Wildlife Education, a local environmental education site
- The Green, Tuckaseegee and Nantahala rivers, famous for whitewater paddling
- Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest, home to magnificent old-growth trees
- Shining Rock Wilderness area and beautiful Cold Mountain
Our outdoor excursions complement what we learn in the classroom. Students take overnight and multiday trips into the Pisgah National Forest to hike, camp, paddle, rock climb and explore caves. Where else can you explore the ecology of a local river in natural science class, then spend the weekend paddling down a river experiencing firsthand what you’ve studied? To enhance their academic studies, students take overnight excursions every other weekend. Each semester there are two five-day trips into the Southern Appalachians, where students, led by OA staff, use the outdoor skills they have developed during their time at OA.
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