We often hear from parents that students come back from Exploration Week standing a little taller with a sense of pride and accomplishment. Fundamentally, Exploration Week is the chance to explore new topics, new places, and new parts of their own identities. This signature program exemplifies many of our founding beliefs about how students learn best: experiential, real-world, collaborative, and hands-on. We know from years and years of these trips that they ignite new passions and interests in students and that the memories are lasting and formative.

Exploration Week immerses students in a multi-age, week-long experience designed to take them into new territory - geographically, personally, interpersonally, and topically. Each offering also includes the opportunity to work closely with another organization and/or people from outside Hyla so that students can learn from new voices, perspectives, and expertise in a real-life setting. By design, the "exploration" goes in many directions as students are asked to step beyond their comfort zones - and step beyond established friendships - to discover new areas of interest, new regions, new connections with classmates and teachers, and even new parts of themselves.

As travel experiences, these trips shake things up and require students to show up in a different way from the typical school day. Exploration Week is an opportunity for students to try out different roles at different times - perhaps as a leader, group motivator, navigator, cook, etc. While these trips are about adventure and fun, and also about shared responsibility and challenge, they are ultimately an opportunity to build self-trust and self-confidence. Each offering is a chance for students to prove to themselves just how much they can do, like try something new, build new friendships, and go a week without their parents and closest friends, among many other areas of growth and development.

Much like the adolescent years themselves, these trips are packed with exciting potential, and we always love to see students in new environments.