Outdoor School is an Oregon rite of passage. Every year, thousands of students get out of the classroom for up to a week of hands-on environmental science education. The earliest programs date to 1957, when 23 Southern Oregon fifth and sixth graders spent five days at a site east of Medford. A second pilot popped up near Sisters the next year. Conversations got underway in Portland, and in spring 1966, with funding from the US Office of Education, the first local sixth graders showed up at a camp near Molalla. Sixty years later, the program, whose Portland-area iteration is run by the Multnomah Education Service District, continues to shuttle kids into the forest for scat-scouting hikes, ear-splitting songs, family-style meals, and a whole lot of social and emotional growth.
500 Portland-area sixth graders who participated in spring 1966.
5,948 Portland-area sixth graders who participated in the 2025–26 school year…