EXPLORING NEW HORIZONS OUTDOOR SCHOOLS a non-profit organizationText Box: Exploring New Horizons Turns 25!! Text Box: This year Exploring New Horizons (ENH) will celebrate twenty five years of providing outdoor education for Bay Area schools. Being a typical year, we will see over 7,000 students, 900 high school counselors and parent chaperones, and 250 teachers attending our programs. With these students, teachers and parents, we will also receive numerous questions about how it all began. And so in celebration of our 25th anniversary, we are presenting a series of articles about the early days, including anecdotes and old photographs from past staff and students. If you are a former “ENH’er” and would like to share a memory or photos, please contact us! In this newsletter we present The Beginning... ENH was founded in 1979 by Laura Tucker and Gary Nightengale for the purpose of providing them with a means of taking summer backpacking trips with children and getting paid for it. These two “early twenty somethings” incorporated ENH as a 501 (c) 3 non-profit organization in June, 1979, and began their first summer camp the following summer at Hoyfjellet Lodge high atop Donner Summit near Norden, California. During the school year, Laura and Gary worked as naturalists for Murray Outdoor School (MOS) (the outdoor education program run by Murray School District of Pleasanton and Dublin, California), with Lafayette School District, Pittsburg Unified, Pleasanton School District, and as substitute classroom teachers. During the 1979-’80 and ‘80-’81 academic years, Laura and Gary ran Text Box: MOS as private contractors. They apparently did a pretty good job, because in the Spring of 1981, Murray School District began contracting directly with ENH to provide outdoor education. With this, ENH was off and running as both a summer camp and an environmental education program. It was around this time that an enthusiastic, young Pleasanton teacher (and now current ENH Board member) named Joanne Greenebaum had her first association with ENH. By the 1981-’82 school year MOS no longer existed, and ENH filled the gap by conducting 5th grade outdoor education at Hoyfjellet Lodge on Donner Summit, and 6th grade outdoor education at Loma Mar. That spring, (continued on

Founder Laura Tucker Signing the ENH incorporation papers, February, 1979.

Trent Kirschner and Scott Ardley, early “ENH kids” as staff at summer camp in 1986.

In This Issue:

 

From the Executive    Director

P.2

Thank You to our Donors

P. 2

Get away to the Pigeon  Point Lighthouse Hostel

P. 3

From our Program Directors, Scott, Jodi and Beth

Meet Our Board!

P.4

P. 4

WHALE WATCHING  at  Pigeon Point, April 19, 2004

P. 5

SUMMER CAMP 2004!!

P.6