Employment

 

Outdoor Science Educator Position, Late March-June, 2026 Job is per diem and 20-40 hours per week. Flexible timing. Possibility for full time summer educator work as well.

$22-$24 an hour

Local candidates only as we regrettably do not have any housing to offer

Do you want to spend all day, every day exploring nature, finding cool animals, and making original discoveries, field guides, maps, and sculptures with awesome kids?

As a seasonal Kestrel instructor, you will co-design and lead science and outdoor education adventures for kids in K-12th grade at public wild reservations throughout the North Shore of Massachusetts. You will design and teach a wide variety of programs, from preschool nature awareness class, to elementary and middle school academic field science work for entire school districts outdoors, to afterschool survival skills and wildlife conservation classes. All of our learning is student centered and involves our kids as authentic scientists. There are no "turnkey" activities, lectures, tours, or absorption of adult-generated values and concepts. Classes are largely outdoors, with some indoor project components. We visit some beautiful places; mostly local forests and freshwater wetlands, rich in wildlife and native trees and plants.

Leading programs includes travel in your own vehicle or our equipment van to various schools and field sites throughout the North Shore. It also involves packing for and cleaning up from each program, including disinfecting gear after wetland classes.

Our approach is to use connection to small local wild places and to plants and animals as touch points for understanding science, building community, and nurturing emotional health. All our programs are focused on original observations, thoughtful understanding, and students’ ideas. We are silly and playful and also very serious about learning and teaching. Our instructors are skilled naturalists who understand and are unendingly curious about the natural world, and about our students and their ideas. We use a constructivist, inquiry based learning model and child-led learning. Our programs are fun, exploratory, messy, muddy, sandy, wild, and different every day.

Some programs may be one hour and occur only once, while others will involve working with groups regularly throughout the semester. All programs are custom tailored to the audience, by all of us as a team.

You are expected to use our template format to write detailed, original lesson plans, and to complete written debriefs/reflections after each class.

We're all educators and we need a collaborative team that will share the load during prep, teaching, cleanup, and keeping the office organized.

Qualifications

There are three main qualifications we're looking for as we screen applications:

* Folks with a personal naturalist practice/knowledge of the natural world. There is no way we can train this skill from scratch during a one week training. We are looking for instructors with at least some knowledge of the natural world and a routine practice of learning more about it. For example, you can tell common forest trees apart, know a few kinds of hawk and how to tell them apart, know your frog songs or how to tell a spring peeper from a gray treefrog, etc. You know how to use reliable sources to find information. You do NOT need to be an expert, but you need to have some naturalist knowledge and already spend time outside learning more, regularly. Please be honest and clear about your level of naturalist knowledge.

* Creative, curious people who are excited about finding things and making things with children and really listening to their ideas, rather than just transferring information to them.

* Applicants who have read a little about our unique approach on our website or in this job description, and can explain what they like about how we teach.

Beyond the above, here are the standard qualifications:

  • Undergraduate or advanced degree in education or environmental field, OR equivalent experience

  • CPR/First Aid current certification required (can be acquired at own expense after hire)

  • Fully vaccinated, with available vaccine records (we accept medical waivers, but no anti vaxxers please)

  • Strong knowledge of New England Natural History, or the natural history of a similar region.

  • At least one year of experience teaching children in classroom and/or field settings, OR experience as a field naturalist or field biologist along with a natural affinity for education

  • Experience or comfort level teaching in - depth, cumulative science skills and natural history, ideally using essential questions and adapting lessons to students’ ideas, interests, skills, and spontaneous events in nature.

  • A firm, while supportive and non-punitive, approach to group management.

  • Willingness to work towards systemic equality, and to use best practices in culturally response teaching, including the voices, backgrounds, and ideas of all of our students in your teaching. Willingness to support children of all genders and gender identities, races, and national origin, children with disabilities, and neurodivergent children. Willing to use a trauma informed, non competitive approach to behavior management

  • Ability to carry up to 30 pounds, and to walk uphill on or off trails up to 2 miles a day, in all weather

  • An appreciation of all living things and the natural environment, and a hardy willingness to properly prepare for and enjoy outdoor explorations in any weather

  • An understanding and enthusiasm for the idea that place-based ecological literacy is important, beyond general concepts.

Summer Camp or Outreach Instructor

$22-$24 an hour July 6-August 14 Plus a training week TBD.

Three options: Survival Camp specialist: July 6-31 Must have outdoor survival skills.

Full Summer instructor: July 6-August 14 Must have good naturalist and teaching skills-we can train you on survival skills.

Per Diem Outreach Instructor: Provide naturalist programming to other local camps

You must be available all dates to apply

Summary

This position is for summer 2026. We will be running different camp sessions sequentially, so if you sign on for the whole summer, you will teach all the different camps, at three different locations. We will consider applicants who can only teach Survival Camp, if you have primitive survival skills. Please see our website to learn about each camp session and check the dates to make sure they line up with your availability, before applying.

Full instructors are over the age of 21. Applicants 18-21 will be considered as Assistant Instructors. We have volunteer positions for youth under 18.

Kestrel is looking to hire super awesome, very outdoorsy, nature loving, kid magnet summer instructors. We are not going to lie, this job is demanding, but also it is a lot of fun and and you will be outdoors in beautiful places all the time. We pay fairly and we're nice to each other and we get some fantastic little naturalist kids adventuring with us. There will be fire making and frog catching and playing and making up stories and building stuff. Kids get to decide how to spend a lot of their time, and the scheduling is all flexible, so if they're into something, one activity can last hours. We live with the rhythms of nature. Everything is 100% outdoors except in cases of storms. Instructors help design the plans, so you get to do the things you love.

The instructor will co-design and facilitate a variety of nature based camp sessions for children. Each camp session is small (20 max total campers and 3-4 staff). The camps are a mix of naturalist skills, outdoor survival skills, adventure, and play and imagination. You may also work with one of our local partners to design and deliver half day programs for their youth. Ages range from 4-15 depending on the week. Locations include Rockport public woods, Beverly public woods, and the campus of a private school in Manchester.

Qualifications:

* First Aid and CPR certification essential (you can acquire these after being hired), * * *Lifeguard training and wilderness first aid strongly preferred, but not required

* Experience working with groups of children in the outdoors

* Skills, knowledge, and experience in at least one of the following: Wilderness skills (wildlife tracking, primitive firecraft, wild edibles, compass navigation, shelters, knots, etc.), water skills (lifeguarding, open water swimming, etc.), naturalist skills (ability to find and identify at least one category of organisms such as reptiles, amphibians, birds, insects, plants, trees, etc.) We are looking for staff who come with some of these skills and can teach them independently.

* Must be very high energy and very outdoorsy. We're looking for someone who voluntarily spends time in the wild on a regular basis and can convey their personal enthusiasm for all living things and for outdoor adventure to others.

* Willing to enthusiastically enjoy the natural world in all weather and traverse up to 3 miles a day carrying a backpack with supplies, over varying terrain

* Belief in childrens' natural capacity for learning and exploration, coupled with a willingness to set and enforce firm safety boundaries.

* Open to Kestrel's way of teaching. Kestrel Summer Adventures is not a traditional summer camp in that we don't play a lot of standard camp games, sing camp songs, or rotate between adult directed activities. We are a community spending our day outside with an organic flow of learning. We teach nature and outdoor skills at a high level, with imagination and joy. Our instructors are creative professionals who invent storylines for each week, conduct all meaningful activities in keeping with the storyline, and make up a lot of their own games. We pay close attention to each camper and make sure each has opportunities to connect with instructors and other campers, and to be recognized for their unique ideas and interests. While a lot of our games and adventures are somewhat silly, we're serious about natural science and about outdoor skills and safety. Our campers finish the summer knowing how to identify plants and animals, make fires without matches, build shelters that can withstand storms, and possessing the confidence of young explorers who know their stuff.

Responsibilities:

* Teach survival and naturalist camps for kids ages 4-13

* Lifeguard half hour per day on the ocean during Survival Rockport Camp, if certified

* Help write * original* lesson plans for each day of camp, using a cohesive, story based, child centered learning model

* Teach specific skills, such as primitive firecraft/wilderness cooking, plant and animal identification, nature sketching, etc.

* Prepare and clean up from each day of camp, keeping gear clean and highly organized

*Maintain supervision and safety of campers at all times, performing first aid as needed.

Notes:

* The listed address is our office. You will be making occasional visits to the office for meetings, training, and to pack/unpack gear. Most of your work will be at our field sites in Rockport, Beverly, and Manchester.

* In addition to a camp instructor to teach our camps full time all summer, we're looking for a hybrid instructor who will teach part time at our camps, with remaining time as an outreach instructor, working with other camps to provide naturalist and survival skills services to their campers and staff. Please note in your cover letter if you're interested in being considered only as camp staff, or as a hybrid camp/outreach instructor.

To Apply for Any Job:

Email a resume and cover letter, detailing why you are interested in Kestrel specifically, and how your skills and experience meet the qualifications of the position, or just answer the application questions thoroughly and send a resume. We are more interested in a short story or two that illustrates your interest and fit for the specific position than a repeat of resume points.

About Kestrel: About Kestrel: Kestrel Educational Adventures is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization with an office in Beverly, Massachusetts. We offer place-based natural science adventures for schools, family groups, and the general public. Our participants learn through direct experiences in the local natural world, guided by qualified instructors with flexible plans. We believe in building a better and more sustainable world through excellent, student – centered natural science education. Our program instructors guide children in developing their abilities to make and share original discoveries and understand complex natural systems, or sometimes just to find nature connection nearby. We believe that everyone should develop their own values through experience, and that this is the most powerful route to sustainability and conservation action. Instead of the "Leave No Trace" approach, we teach that it is okay to move things, build things, and freely explore, and that we should take good care of all the wild places we visit. We teach everyone that they should wander, explore, touch, imagine, and live in the natural world. Because of our small size, we do not have any staff housing facilities. We do have a great place to work and lots of opportunities to learn, a golden retriever staff member, and chocolate.

NOTICE OF NONDISCRIMINATION
All educational and non-academic programs, activities and employment opportunities are offered without regard to race, color, sex, religion, national origin, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, homelessness, age and/or, disability, and any other class or characteristic protected by law.