NEVER LET YOUR SCHOOLING STAND IN THE WAY OF YOUR EDUCATION.’ MARK TWAIN

Through both academic outdoor learning and extended expeditions, Woodstock students develop lasting relationships with the natural world, while building resilience and leadership. The outdoors is an abundant educational resource that is a highly valued element of the Woodstock experience. Hanifl Centre staff work alongside Woodstock School’s teachers to support experiential and outdoor learning across the curriculum. This is amplified during Activity Week when Hanifl Centre supports 500 students and 80 staff across 30 destinations. Activity Week is not sitting in a classroom, taking notes or studying for tests. It is one of the best experiential learning experiences Woodstock students have. Every October, for one week, teachers and students from Kindergarten to Grade 12 head off-campus to explore India, travelling to destinations as nearby as Mussoorie, as far away as Varanasi and Dharamshala. Activity Week is exploring frescoes in a thirteenth-century Jain cave, roping up to cross a glacier, rafting the white waters of the upper Ganges, helping village kids prepare for their school’s first- ever sports meet, mountain biking through Spiti in Himachal Pradesh, playing with blind children, teaching in a slum school in Delhi, helping the cook at a dhaba make chapatis, exploring the town of Mussoorie and much more.    

Students vary their Activity Weeks; over time they participate in a full range of hiking, cultural, service and environmental activities and by Grade 12 they’re ready to organize their own activity. Woodstock’s Activity Week is the stuff of which life is made – learning, discovery, friendship, challenge, service, responsibility, adventure.