ASCENT Outdoor Education
ASCENT is TCIS's outdoor education program for students in Grades 6–8. Through progressively challenging experiences, students develop confidence, responsibility, teamwork, practical skills, and a deeper understanding of themselves and others.
The goal is not simply to take students outdoors. ASCENT gives young people opportunities to experience challenge, depend on one another, solve real problems, and discover that they are capable of more than they may have expected.
Challenge With Support
Growth often happens when students move beyond what feels familiar.
Outdoor experiences create natural challenges – changing weather, unfamiliar activities, physical effort, shared responsibilities, and problems that cannot always be solved immediately. Students learn to respond with perseverance, flexibility, and good judgment while trained adults provide guidance and appropriate support.
Challenge is purposeful. Students are encouraged to stretch themselves without being expected to face unfamiliar situations alone.
Confidence Is Built Through Experience
Confidence grows when students experience themselves succeeding at something that once felt difficult.
Setting up camp, navigating a route, cooking together, canoeing, climbing, or completing a demanding journey can become more than an outdoor skill. Each experience gives students evidence that they can learn, adapt, contribute, and keep going when something is difficult.
Learning to Depend on Others – and Be Dependable
ASCENT experiences are intentionally shared. Students have responsibilities to their group and learn that their preparation, attitude, decisions, and actions affect other people.
They practice communicating, solving disagreements, encouraging one another, sharing work, and stepping forward when something needs to be done. In this setting, teamwork and leadership become experiences rather than abstract ideas.
A Three-Year Journey
ASCENT develops as students move through Middle School, with increasing opportunities for independence, responsibility, and leadership.
Grade 6 – Building the Team
Grade 6 introduces students to outdoor learning and the importance of working together. Students build foundational skills while learning how preparation, communication, and individual choices contribute to the success of a group.
Grade 7 – Growing Independence
In Grade 7, students take greater responsibility for themselves and their team. Experiences become more demanding as students strengthen practical skills, perseverance, problem-solving, and confidence in unfamiliar situations.
Grade 8 – Leading the Way
By Grade 8, students are expected to demonstrate greater independence and leadership. They draw on skills developed during previous years while taking increased responsibility for decisions, teamwork, and supporting others.
Skills With a Purpose
Students develop practical outdoor skills such as camping, navigation, water safety, climbing, and responsible travel in natural environments. But the larger purpose extends beyond mastering individual activities.
Students learn to prepare carefully, assess situations, care for shared resources, respect the natural environment, and understand that competence brings responsibility.
Stewardship and Service
Time outdoors also gives students opportunities to consider their relationship with the natural world and their responsibility toward communities beyond themselves.
Through stewardship, service, and expedition experiences, students encounter different environments and perspectives while learning that leadership includes caring for people and places.
What Students Carry With Them
The most important outcomes of ASCENT are not limited to the outdoors.
A student who has worked through uncertainty, contributed to a team, solved an unexpected problem, or discovered new confidence carries those experiences back into the classroom, friendships, activities, and future challenges.
ASCENT gives students a place to practice what it means to Learn • Love • Lead – learning through experience, caring for others, and becoming increasingly ready to take responsibility for themselves and the communities around them.
