Overview
The Outdoor Trips & Travel Department is seeking talented, engaging, and compassionate Trip Instructors who believe that experiential opportunities can lead to significant growth for participants – growth that often comes when one is challenged in an unfamiliar environment that requires discomfort and hard work. Our program incorporates outdoor/wilderness travel and experiences, cultural immersion, language immersion, and service. View our Outdoor Trips & Travel page for more information.
The mission of the Senior Yukon trip is to provide an opportunity for the senior class, advisors, and faculty to share a wilderness experience, connect broadly and widely as a class community, reflect on the senior year, including graduation and life beyond high school, and take time to acknowledge meaningful relationships and repair injured ones.
Each Spring, the trip takes place outside the town of Whitehorse, Yukon at Fox Bay on Lake Laberge. The core themes of the trip always include students confronting uncertainty and discomfort, exercising skills to navigate complexity, functioning in a group, reflecting on the high school experience, and having meaningful conversations in large and small groups.
Through a series of shifting campsites, students move from and between peer groups and assigned rotation groups. Days include structured and unstructured activities, allowing students to spend ample time in conversation around a campfire and/or creating and enjoying unplugged and analog activities in a beautiful wilderness setting. Some evenings include sharing circle-style conversations, encouraging students to speak to each other authentically about themselves and their school experience. Often, students and adults will stay up late in an attempt to see the Northern Lights.
March 1-15, 2026 with actual Trip Dates: March 5-14, 2026 plus occasional zoom trainings
Qualifications:
Instructors must have current WFA and CPR certification. WFR certification preferred.
Several years of professional experience leading students for reputable outdoor education programs and schools
Teaching experience (classroom or outdoors)
Appropriate course area backcountry wilderness experience, both personal and professional
Experience with students ranging from grade 7-12 preferred
Instructors need to be competent outdoor leaders and patient and inspiring teachers
Required Skills:
Live by SAAS Mission, Principles, and Values and role model this to students.
Live comfortably in the outdoor environments where trips are located. Ability to care for one’s self in the environment as well as having the capacity to care for students regardless of conditions and circumstances.
Understand SAAS risk management policies and procedures.
Understand the major hazards and risks inherent in the specific trip environment
Lifting, carrying and moving up to 50-70 lbs.
Preferred Skills:
Be able to recognize and act on appropriate and inappropriate student behavior and have the ability to manage student-to-student, adult-to-student, and adult-to-adult relationships. This includes the ability to give feedback and deal positively with conflict and stress. The goal is to support students as they develop and grow on trips and transfer skills and to apply learning back at home and school.
About Seattle Academy of Arts & Sciences
SEATTLE ACADEMY is a dynamic community that challenges students to question, imagine, and create in order to contribute boldly to a changing world. This mission comes alive in our urban school setting where we serve grades 6 – 12 in a vibrant, independent school environment. Our diverse faculty and staff are exceptionally qualified, strong academically, and combine rich life experience with passion for their disciplines. Our teaching philosophy is geared toward our mission and guiding principles of Culture of Performance, College and Life, Know the Kid, and Inclusive Community.
