Summer Wilderness Skills/Naturalist Instructor Position Available In Essex, Massachusetts

Summer Wilderness Skills/Naturalist Instructor Kestrel Educational Adventures 22 Broadway, Beverly, MA 01915 Job Starts July 7th. Choose from full time or part time. Summary This position is for summer 2025. We will be running different camp sessions sequentially, so if you sign on for the summer, you will teach all the different camps, at three different locations. We will consider applicants who can only teach some weeks. Please see our website to learn about each camp sessions and check the dates to make sure they line up with your availability, before applying. Full instructors are over the age of 21. Applicants 18-21 will be considered as Assistant Instructors. We have volunteer positions for youth under 18. Kestrel is looking to hire super awesome, very outdoorsy, nature loving, kid magnet summer instructors. We are not going to lie, this job is demanding, but also it is a lot of fun and and you will be outdoors in beautiful places all the time. We pay fairly and we’re nice to each other and we get some fantastic little naturalist kids adventuring with us. There will be fire making and frog catching and playing and making up stories and building stuff. Kids get to decide how to spend a lot of their time, and the scheduling is all flexible, so if they’re into something, one activity can last hours. We live with the rhythms of nature. Everything is 100% outdoors except in cases of storms. Instructors help design the plans, so you get to do the things you love. The instructor will co-design and facilitate a variety of nature based camp sessions for children. Each camp session is small (20 max total campers and 3-4 staff). The camps are a mix of naturalist skills, outdoor survival skills, adventure, and play and imagination. You may also work with one of our local partners to design and deliver half day programs for their youth. Ages range from 4-15 depending on the week. Locations include Rockport public woods, Beverly public woods, and the campus of a private school in Manchester.

Qualifications:

• First Aid and CPR certification essential (you can acquire these after being hired),
• Lifeguard training and wilderness first aid strongly preferred, but not required
• Experience working with groups of children in the outdoors
• Skills, knowledge, and experience in at least one of the following: Wilderness skills (wildlife tracking, primitive firecraft, wild edibles, compass navigation, shelters, knots, etc.

), water skills (lifeguarding, open water swimming, etc.), naturalist skills (ability to find and identify at least one category of organisms such as reptiles, amphibians, birds, insects, plants, trees, etc.) We are looking for staff who come with some of these skills and can teach them independently.

• Must be very high energy and very outdoorsy. We’re looking for someone who voluntarily spends time in the wild on a regular basis and can convey their personal enthusiasm for all living things and for outdoor adventure to others.
• Willing to enthusiastically enjoy the natural world in all weather and traverse up to 3 miles a day carrying a backpack with supplies, over varying terrain
• Belief in childrens’ natural capacity for learning and exploration, coupled with a willingness to set and enforce firm safety boundaries.
• Open to Kestrel’s way of teaching.

Kestrel Summer Adventures is not a traditional summer camp in that we don’t play a lot of standard camp games or rotate between adult directed activities. We are a community spending our day outside with an organic flow of learning. We teach nature and outdoor skills at a high level, with imagination and joy. Our instructors are creative professionals who invent storylines for each week, conduct all meaningful activities in keeping with the storyline, and make up a lot of their own games. We pay close attention to each camper and make sure each has opportunities to connect with instructors and other campers, and to be recognized for their unique ideas and interests. While a lot of our games and adventures are somewhat silly, we’re serious about natural science and about outdoor skills and safety. Our campers finish the summer knowing how to identify plants and animals, make fires without matches, build shelters that can withstand storms, and possessing the confidence of young explorers who know their stuff.

Responsibilities:

• Teach survival and naturalist camps for kids ages 4-13
• Lifeguard half hour per day on the ocean during Survival Rockport Camp, if certified
• Help write
• original
• lesson plans for each day of camp, using a cohesive, story based, child centered learning model
• Teach specific skills, such as primitive firecraft/wilderness cooking, plant and animal identification, nature sketching, etc.
• Prepare and clean up from each day of camp, keeping gear clean and highly organized
• Maintain supervision and safety of campers at all times, performing first aid as needed.

Notes:

• The listed address is our office. You will be making occasional visits to the office for meetings, training, and to pack/unpack gear. Most of your work will be at our field sites in Rockport, Beverly, and Manchester.
• In addition to a camp instructor to teach our camps full time all summer, we’re looking for a hybrid instructor who will teach part time at our camps, with remaining time as an outreach instructor, working with other camps to provide naturalist and survival skills services to their campers and staff.

Please note in your cover letter if you’re interested in being considered only as camp staff, or as a hybrid camp/outreach instructor.

Job Types:

Full-time, Temporary Pay:

$20.00 – $24.00 per hour

Schedule:

Day shift Monday to Friday Application Question(s): What are your outdoor pastimes, and have you done much hiking/camping/backpacking that you have planned and organized? Do you like to be outdoors in nature all day long, and are you comfortable with rain, bugs, snakes, etc. What is the best way to get children interested in learning about nature? What naturalist or outdoor survival skills do you have? Which ones are you passionate about learning? Have you looked over Kestrel’s website and/or Facebook page and specifically read about our educational philosophy and our summer camps? If so, what do you like specifically about Kestrel and why do you want to work for Kestrel this summer? Do you have any certifications (first aid, CPR, Wilderness First Aid, lifeguard training)? Do you have all your standard childhood vaccines and do you have records of them that you can send if hired? Are you vaccinated against covid-19? Ability to

Commute:

Beverly, MA 01915 (Required)

Work Location:

In person