1st

First grade begins the Nueva Trips Program with a sleepover in the Ballroom, just outside their classrooms, a place that is very familiar to them. It is an enormously fun and exciting evening for them and a night off for parents! As this is often the first time some of the children have ever slept away from home, many prepare for this event by having practice sleepovers with friends.

One of the greatest benefits and goals of this sleepover is to encourage and celebrate the children’s growing sense of independence. Ahead of the event, the children brainstorm reasons why they’re excited about the sleepover. Some items include: “Bringing my special stuffy to school,” “Staying up late!” and “Eating breakfast with my friends.” The excitement is contagious.

Most of our activities are centered in the ballroom, outside areas, and the classrooms. The children work in teams to prepare, and clean up after, meals and snacks. There are also opportunities for parents to come to help organize, cook, and clean up for the breakfast.

2nd

The second grade travels to Mt. Cross in the town of Felton, which is located in the Santa Cruz mountains, for a two-day trip. The trip is conducted by Nueva Science and SEL staff, the classroom teachers, and naturalists from Naturalists At Large.

Facilities: Mt. Cross Camp and Conference Center
Mt. Cross is a small camp and conference center set in a redwood glen just outside of Felton, CA. Over four miles of trails sprawl across a hilly 105-acre camp, and Mt. Cross is home to a variety of forest flora and fauna, including deer, squirrels, jays, woodpeckers, banana slugs, Douglas firs, and redwoods. The site includes meeting rooms, a cafeteria, cabins, and a tree house. Mt. Cross is bordered by the San Lorenzo River and Mansion Creek, and is viewed as a very significant part of the local watershed and riparian corridor system. Days are usually sunny and warm and nights are cool.

3rd

The third grade travels to Memorial Grove Park near Pescadero for a three-day trip. The trip is conducted by Nueva science and SEL staff, the classroom teacher,s and naturalists from Naturalists At Large.

Facilities: Memorial Grove Park
Memorial Park’s 499 acres provide an opportunity to view outstanding old-growth redwoods with over eight miles of hiking trails, picnic facilities, a visitor center and a creek swimming area.

There is an abundance of plant and animal life to be found, including huckleberry, ferns, redwood sorrel, horsetail, and Stellar’s jays, acorn woodpeckers, western grey squirrels, raccoons, skunks, and banana slugs. Pescadero Creek is a winter home for steelhead trout as they migrate upstream, and is viewed as a very significant part of the local watershed and riparian corridor system.

Our camp, the Homestead Flat Youth Camp, is approximately three acres in size, with a crushed rock and wood chip surface. Its surface slope varies from 0%-6%. The area is partly shady due to surrounding vegetation made up of redwood, tan oak, Douglas fir, and huckleberry. Days are usually sunny, but sometimes damp and cool.

4th

The fourth grade spends four days at Westminster Woods in Sonoma County, exploring Redwood Ecology, Stream Ecology, and Conservation Ecology. The students investigate stream health by doing water quality testing and exploring indicator species. They re-examine features of the redwood forest habitat and the wildlife it supports. They also explore wildlife and plants of the beach habitat, and end their journey with a half-day exploration of forest management, doing a restoration project.

Facilities: Westminster Woods
Westminster Woods is a unique camp, conference, and retreat center nestled in the Sonoma County Coastal Redwoods, north of San Francisco, near the Pacific Ocean. Located on historic Dutch Bill Creek, they offer over 200 acres for learning and recreation. They are renowned for their innovative Environmental Education program for schools, and state-of-the-art Challenge Course.

While there, under the leadership of Westminster's outstanding naturalists, our students study Redwood Forest Ecology, Marine Ecology and Tidepooling, Stream Ecology and Watershed Education, Restoration Ecology, and Night Ecology and Astronomy. They focus on five key principles of ecology: Energy Flow, Cycles, Interconnections, Diversity, and Change. They also participate in evening campfires and sing-alongs, and a talent show, and each night they have a choice of sleeping in tents or cabins.

5th

The weeklong trip to Arches National Park, the San Juan River, Crow Canyon Archeological Center, and various archeological sites provides powerful, unforgettable experiences for the children which solidify and extend their classroom learning

• Hiking among the red rock arches of the Entrada Sandstone laid down in the Jurassic period.
• Bending down to pick up a 900-year-old potsherd from the dust of the Shields Pueblo site.
• Listening to the stories of Uncle Terry, a Ute Mountain elder.
• Observing the fluvial processes that we modeled in our stream tables actually at work as we spend a long day rafting down the San Juan River.
• Walking through a dwelling that once housed Ancestral Puebloan families and finding ancient corn cobs still in place.
• Cutting down through the recognizable rock layers of an anticline as we go down the river.
• Scrambling down the ladder into a kiva and feeling the spirits of the Ancient Ones.
• Working in the lab to wash and categorize potsherds.
• Hiking along a nature trail and discovering that Pete, our Navajo bus driver, is an expert on the medicinal uses of native plants.
• Glimpsing the big horn sheep along the river, looking jjust as they do in the rock art panels we saw a few miles back.
• Standing awestruck in the Pot Room, as Lew carefully shows us the real things.
• Seeing how the land forms we are observing are represented on our topographic maps and making predictions from the maps.
• Learning how to grind corn and use a fire bow from Becky, as she tells us how life was for her mother at a BIA boarding school.
• Using our knowledge of dendochronology, a map of a real site, and the graphs we made to figure out when a kiva was build and when more was added to the structure.
• Examining artificats, attempting to reconstruct the lifeways they represent, and determining the chronological sequence reflected.
• Finalizing our understanding of the Southwest chronology during our day at Mesa Verde, as we begin the morning at a 1400-year-old pithouse and come forward in time through a variety of village sites, ending at the magnificent cliff dwellings of the late 1200s.
• Working with and learning from real archeologists ever day, who explain their specialties in terms we can understand.

Facilities: Crow Canyon

The Crow Canyon Archaeological Center, located in southwestern Colorado, is dedicated to understanding, teaching, and preserving the rich history of the ancestral Pueblo Indians (also called the Anasazi) who inhabited the canyons and mesas of the Mesa Verde region more than 700 years ago. The area has one of the densest concentrations of well-preserved archaeological sites in the world, attracting the interest of archaeologists, and capturing the imagination of the public, for well over 100 years.

Crow Canyon's campus-based programs allow us to participate in actual archaeological research, making exciting discoveries in the field and laboratory that add to our collective understanding of the Pueblo past. The Center’s award-winning research and education programs are developed in consultation with American Indians, whose insights complement the archaeological perspective and add a unique cross-cultural dimension to the experience.

Advisories

Each Fall the Middle School kicks off the new school year with an advisory camping trip and adventure. The trip provides an opportunity for students to reconnect and to forge new friendships, giving students the opportunity to spend some quality time with each other, across grades in Advisory. The trips are filled with excitement and fun, and students often are telling camping trip stories all year. Although not formally part of the outdoor program, students have an opportunity to see a part of the Bay Area that may be new to them.

6th

The East Coast trip serves as the culminating experience in the spring semester for the 6th grade. The curriculum focus is American history, with special attention given to Colonial America and U.S. Constitutional history. Students have the opportunity to visit Williamsburg and Washington, D.C. The trip provides the chance for students to engage in hands-on activities in Williamsburg, to cement their understanding of colonial life. In Washington, D.C., students visit government buildings, Smithsonian museums, meet with congressional representatives, and spend time at the newly renovated Newseum. In addition, students tour the various Washington monuments.

7th

Yosemite

Each spring, the seventh grade goes on a five-day outdoor education program in the Sierras. Their backpacking expeditions in Yosemite National Park have been one of the high points of the School's outdoor education program. In addition to the teachers, a strong team of expert guides from Southern Yosemite Mountain Guides join our groups.

This trip has a number of major objectives:

• to gain experience in wilderness travel and living, learning the essential skills of low-impact or leave-no-trace backpacking
• to grow in practical intelligences, real-life problem solving, self-confidence, self-reliance, and compassion for others
• to learn about the Sierra mountain environment
• to develop the students' ability to work together as a team and to deepen their understanding of their classmates.

The many tasks necessary for traveling and living safely in the wilderness are performed by all of the students as a group, including caring for others, purifying water, securing food from animals, helping to cook the meals, and cleaning the dishes. The students start their teamwork before the trip by participating in food and nutrition planning, equipment testing and organization, and physical fitness exercises. Finally, we have a lot of fun: students have plenty of opportunities to enjoy being with their classmates and teachers, and to relish the unique experience of living in the spectacular Sierras.

The week is a full one. After arriving at our Sierra destination, the remainder of the first day is spent checking preparations. We break up into four separate hiking groups; each  hiking group has twelve or fewer students, two Nueva teachers, and one guide, and each group travels to different destinations within the Park. On the second day, each group hikes with packs into the back country to set up their own base camp, and investigates the surrounding country on day hikes from their base. Some groups choose to move their camp to different locations during the week in the back country.  At the end of the week, the four groups hike out and return to school around dinner time.

Ashland

Our trip to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland allows the 7th grade to see professional productions of the plays they have performed during the Nueva Drama Conservatory. We enjoy performances in several theaters, including the outdoor Elizabethan Theater, a replica of Shakespeare’s Globe and one of the oldest Elizabethan theaters in America.  Over our short stay we see four plays and have a special private workshop.

8th

The International Trips

The culmination of the Nueva Trips Program is the two-week-long international trips. Students who have been studying Japanese for the past three years travel to Japan, while those who have studied Spanish travel to Spain. In 2011, the students who began studying Mandarin when they were in 6th grade will travel to China. Both trips include homestays with host families, attending a local host school, and travel to several different locations around the country.

Our American culture represents an amalgam of cultures from around the world, blending and evolving in the miracle that is democracy, begun in 1776 to 1789, with the ratification of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. The founders spelled out for the world the values upon which the nation was created, and each wave of immigration to this country contributed aspects of the cultures from which they came.

In Japan and Spain, however, the civilization is contiguous. The contemporary culture and its values have evolved over millennia, and the families living in Japan and Spain have been a part of that evolution. In preparation for our journey, we look at aspects of the culture over time -- literature and poetry; politics and government; music, theater, and the visual arts.

During the course of study in 8th grade humanities we explore the tension between traditional and contemporary Japan and Spain and compare our own culture with the Japanese and Spanish. Our goal is to provide students with a complex understanding of Japan and Spain that will heighten their experiences and build on their sensibility of Asian and European cultures. Students are asked to consider how people make their beliefs visible and to ponder on the dominant values of Japan and Spain.

The 8th grade international trip also serves as the culminating trip experience for the Nueva student, bringing to a conclusion the long journey from the first grade sleepover in mansion to a two-week international trip, with increased responsibility and independence.

The 8th Grade Retreat

The 8th grade retreat, which takes place just before High School acceptance letters arrive, is an opportunity to escape the possible anxiety of waiting for the mail or spending stressful days at home and school. The retreat also gives us an opportunity to set the tone for our trips to Japan and Spain. We talk about the expectations for the trip and we practice spending time together in productive and appropriate ways.

The atmosphere we create at this retreat, and the natural beauty of the retreat location, supports our social and emotional emphasis, which prepares the students to acknowledge and share coping strategies for the many feelings associated with the High School application process and the prospect of leaving Nueva.