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UPPER SCHOOL
Kauffmann Program
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orth Yarmouth Academy’s Kauffmann Program in Environmental Writing and Wilderness Exploration seeks to educate students in the larger community about the importance of wilderness and nature. With a focus on environmental thinking, writing, conservation, and wilderness travel, the program is intended to create opportunities for NYA students, high school students across Maine, and the larger community to acknowledge the importance of wilderness conservation and environmental issues. The Kauffmann Program fulfills and supports NYA’s mission to develop a “concern for the larger community and appreciation for the natural environment.”
author Kim Heacox’s book, The Only Kayak; John Kauffmann’s Alaska’s Brooks Range: The Ultimate Mountains; and Alaskan writer Hank Lentfer’s The Faith of Cranes. In addition to reading, students work with faculty from The Telling Room on personal environmental essays, which they share at a public reading in May. In June, after school has ended, students from class travel to Glacier Bay, Alaska, where they have opportunities to meet some of the writers they have read as part of class, work with scientists, and spend a week kayaking in the wilderness backcountry of Glacier Bay. During the backcountry kayak trip, students practice leadership, leave-no-trace skills, navigation, various safety protocols,
or political activism, personal memoir, scholarship, science-based, or simply good storytelling on an environmental theme. Cash prizes and a $5,000 merit scholarship to NYA are awarded at a ceremony and public reading that includes the winner and second and third place winners. Winning essays are published on the NYA website.
mindfulness, journaling; and they revisit some of the writing they studied during the semester.
high school students. The trip includes writing workshops and exercises where students, in a guided workshop setting, share feedback on each other’s writing, and an overnight trip to the mountains of Maine where students will have a chance to day-hike. No experience with environmental writing or hiking is necessary, just a willingness to learn and fully participate. Hikes of different lengths and challenges will be available to accommodate students.
K AU F F M A N N S U M M E R WRITING SEMINAR Students can develop their writing while on an inspiring camping and hiking adventure. This seminar is free and open by application Maine
COMPONENTS OF THE PROGRAM The NYA Outing Club, Glacier Bay Environmental Writing Course, Summer Writing Seminar, Kauffmann Prize for Environmental Writing, Middle School Leadership Academy, the Sea Kayak Academy, and the environmental lecture series are all part of the Kauffmann Program. NYA also offers a Diploma with Distinction in Outdoor & Environmental Leadership and an elective class entitled “Brain Training & Resilience” as part of the Kauffmann Program. Regular class experiential trips fall under the Kauffmann Program umbrella, also. Examples of such outings include hiking huts and trails overnights in Maine and New Hampshire to locations like Flagstaff Lake and Mizpah Springs Hut, an overnight on the Schooner Stephen Taber, Rippleffect kayaking overnights to Cow Island, a day of lobstering in Casco Bay, urban experiences to Boston and New York City, ropes course and climbing wall team-building activities, just to name a few.
E N V I R O N M E N TA L W R I T I N G The environmental writing course is for NYA students that culminates in a backcountry journey in Alaska. This interdisciplinary course, which focuses on Alaska’s Glacier Bay, includes extensive reading and writing on environmental topics, backcountry protocols and trip planning, kayak safety and technique, geology, biology, and climate science. At the center of the course are three books: Alaskan
K AU F F M A N N P R I Z E F O R E N V I R O N M E N TA L W R I T I N G The John Kauffmann Prize for Environmental Writing is an annual prize open to all Maine high school students. Submissions of nonfiction should be fewer than 1,500 words about any environmentally-related topic. The essay may be nature writing, environmental –32–
The seminar will be led by NYA Kauffmann Program Director Ian Ramsey with CoInstructor Dawn Potter, award-winning author, poet, essayist, and teacher
