My name is Mel Hoffman, and I am the Program Director of Adventure Risk Challenge. I have the privilege of overseeing our Summer Immersion Courses and Community Leadership Program while supporting our program staff, and I am currently leading our hiring process to find a new Program Coordinator. I wanted to share with you my story of working for ARC the past decade and to encourage you to share this email widely, along with a link to the Employment page of our website.
When I first heard about ARC in a hiring announcement early in 2010, I immediately decided to apply because of its integration of education and the outdoors. I had already been working in the field of outdoor education for almost a decade, moving from one organization to the next around the country, and I had discovered that every program defined the term “education” differently. Each place I worked helped me to hone my own interest within the field, and I was determined to keep moving until I found a good fit. I was looking for a way to combine the transformative student experiences I had seen as a wilderness therapy instructor with the more serious focus on education that I enjoyed as a school teacher. And that was exactly what ARC offered.
I was incredibly fortunate to be selected to be part of the ARC summer staff in 2010. I discovered an organization with so much integrity; the staff who welcomed me truly lived up to their mission statement, held themselves to a high standard, and constantly challenged themselves, and me, to keep our students at the center of everything. ARC was intentional in everything, had a seriousness of purpose, focused on outcomes, and truly did what it set out to do – integrate wilderness and literacy to bring more depth to both.
And I haven’t even mentioned the students yet! Getting to work with such amazing students and see their full range of humanity – funny, smart, scared, brave, mature, frustrated, proud – was, and continues to be, an unbelievable honor. I still can’t believe they let me into their inner worlds, allow me to witness their transformations, and let me feel as proud of their accomplishments as if they were my own. The final week of my first summer was a whirlwind of activities – I got to watch our students teach science to younger kids, present their personal poems to a crowd of adults, run 7 miles, and see their families for the first time in a month. When it was all over I was exhausted, and I was completely hooked. Summer 2020 will be my tenth summer with ARC. I continue to feel challenged by new responsibilities, valued by the staff and board, and honored to work with our students.