Water Gap Canoeing for Grieving Teens
This seven-day course is a unique Outward Bound adventure specifically designed for teens coping with the death of a loved one.
This seven-day course is a unique Outward Bound adventure specifically designed for teens coping with the death of a loved one. You’ll be paddling on the beautiful Delaware River through the rugged and historic Delaware Water Gap.
By combining personal growth methodologies of Outward Bound with a simple support model that honors the griever, we deliver an intensely profound healing experience relevant to the lives of the people who are coping with the death of a loved one. Throughout the course, there are evening discussions to review personal and group challenges encountered during the day and in life. Topics include grieving, leadership, independent decision-making, responsibility, and teamwork.
UPCOMING COURSES
This course is closed for the season. 2021 courses coming soon.
Grieving Teens Courses
Course price reflects reduced tuition made possible through the generous support of our donors and the Leadership support of The New York Life Foundation. Additional need based scholarships are available. To learn more about additional need based scholarships, click here.
Grieving Teens expeditions are designed to help students build confidence and resiliency, acquire coping skills and create a network of ongoing of support. The grief work that is woven into the curriculum helps young people share in a relevant healing experience with real-world outcomes. And in a time and space set aside just for them, grieving teens realize they are not alone.
- Build core skills: Instructors provide students with hands-on training on expedition and personal skills. As they learn to live and travel together, students create an inclusive, supportive crew, sharing through discussion circles and grief rituals.
- Practice Outward Bound values: Students learn to incorporate Outward Bound values into everyday life by pushing their own limits and seeking challenge as an opportunity for personal growth and healing.
- Process and reflect: Journaling, one-on-one conferences and discussion circles help students understand how Outward Bound successes might translate to coping skills back home.
- Demonstrate mastery: As the course nears the end, students tackle an expedition challenge, and pause to share and honor their losses.
- What you’ll learn: Students return home with healthy support mechanisms and a positive network of peers they can count on in the future.
Throughout the expedition, students build, practice, and reflect on skills, conduct service projects and also tackle at least one challenge element - rock climbing, a peak ascent or a big whitewater day - that pushes them to find undiscovered strength. Grief-centered introspection activities such as journaling, one-on-one conferences and nightly small and large-group discussion circles help students understand how their experiences thus far might translate to coping skills back home. During the expedition's final phase, students experience a rare gift and highlight of the course: time to think and reflect on the Solo. With food, equipment and the skills they’ve learned, individuals spend time alone at an assigned campsite – with Instructors periodically checking in on them. As the course nears the end, students participate in a Dedication Ascent. At the top of the peak, the group gathers and each student shares who they have chosen to honor. During the final debrief, students identify continued, healthy support mechanisms and a positive network of peers they can count on in the future.
Course price reflects reduced tuition made possible through the generous support of our donors and the Leadership support of The New York Life Foundation. Additional need based scholarships are available. To learn more about additional need based scholarships, click here.
Canoeing
In the Delaware Water Gap, each section of the river is different and has its own personality. If you want secluded, wide water with lots of wildlife, the stretch that flows through the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area from Matamoras to Kittatinny Point offers it all. In addition to learning valuable paddling techniques in a tandem canoe, you and your fellow crew members will learn basic outdoor skills like Leave-No-Trace Ethics, outdoor living, and backcountry travel in order to successfully live, work, eat and play together. This process will hone your communication, problem-solving, and leadership skills. During the expedition, you will learn to use technical equipment, tie knots, paddle and camp, all while Instructors provide expert supervision.
High Ropes
On your first or final day of course, you will begin or end your expedition at our Wissahickon Valley High Ropes Course. Challenge yourself with the support of your teammates on one of our thrilling high ropes elements in the heart of the “Philadelphia Wilderness.”
Course Area
The Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area encompasses 67,000 acres of mountain ridge, forest and floodplain on both sides of the Delaware River in the states of New Jersey and Pennsylvania. From the southern end of the park, you can view the S-shaped chasm of the Delaware Water Gap, where the river cuts a twisting path through 1,400-foot Kittatinny Ridge. Within the river watershed, you'll discover steep wooded-and-rock slopes, bountiful rhododendron, dark hallows, tinsel-like ravines and tumbling waterfalls.
Getting Started
If you are ready to enroll on a course click the enroll button next to the course you wish to select or you can enroll over the phone by speaking with one of our Admissions Advisors (toll-free) at 866-467-7651.
To secure your spot on a course you must submit an enrollment form and $300 deposit that is applied toward the total cost of the course and includes a $150 non-refundable enrollment processing fee.
