Erik Gearhart’s 30+ years in education have included both classroom teaching and instructing for NOLS, Outward Bound, and managing multiple outdoor education programs. He has taught history, literature, economics, humanities, English, and social studies for NAIS schools in California, Nevada, and Washington, as well as in rural public schools in Minnesota.
Erik also taught in Native American Schools with the Shoshone and Arapaho tribes and developed partner learning programs with the Inupiaq, Gwich’in, Makah, and Lakota nations. For his thesis, he researched the experience of BIPOC students and families in independent schools and developed a toolset for improving inclusion.
His specialties include creating interdisciplinary experiential programs in critical cultural landscapes that blend outdoor education with intercultural immersion and academic studies.
Erik also specializes in growing experiential education in schools while also working to bring risk management up to modern industry standards. He is certified in Risk Management for Administrators by the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS). In his role on the steering committee of the Northwest Independent School Outdoor Program Managers Group, Erik audits peer schools’ off-campus programs to improve their risk management and activity-specific protocols.
Erik is an avid climber, kayaker, snowboarder, and surfer. Some of his favorite places to work with students include the Alaskan Arctic, the Mojave Desert, and South Dakota’s Black Hills. Erik and his wife Lisa moved to the island in 2022.
