For over 50 years, Echo Hill Outdoor School, located on Maryland’s Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay, has been helping students experience the magic of the outdoors with no classrooms, no textbooks, and no assignments other than engaging with the people and the natural world around them. Exploring natural landscapes from marshes to local waterways, students observe and appreciate the environment surrounding them. Experiential learning takes place on our adventure/challenge course, in our nature preserve and its freshwater swamp, and around the waterways and fields of rural Kent County, allowing participants to experience a ‘eureka’ moment when their classroom lessons jump out of the textbook and into real life. Our programs aim to form a practical understanding of the natural and human environment based on hands-on experiences, and through them, to help each student grow their social/emotional sense of self-reliance, confidence, and independence.

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at Echo Hill Outdoor School:

Echo Hill Outdoor School supports an environment that values the dignity and worth of all individuals. Our focus is on empowering the individual and developing empathy and respect for ourselves, for others and for the natural environment. We recognize how differences shape how we experience the world and the watershed—and how we access resources and the environment.