Thank you for applying. Please reach out to hr@trackersearth.com for questions and need.
Trackers teaches kids the skills that carried humans for more than two million years: fire, shelter, tracking, foraging, archery, blacksmithing, boats, and bows. We teach them for the connecting they give to kids and families.
A six-year-old who tracks elk to where they browse learns the forest is alive. A twelve-year-old who sleeps warm in a shelter she built stops asking permission to be capable.
Our school-year programs are mentorships. The same educator holds the same kids from fall through spring and into summer, and every scheduled day counts.
That educator is the Coordinator. You help design the year: the curriculum arcs, skill progressions, story immersions, and the operations that carry them. Then you teach in what you built, leading a team of Guides and Interns who bring each day to life.
The Role at a Glance
- Full-time, year-round salaried leadership role
- $840–$1,056/week plus certification add-ons
- Portland & Sandy, Oregon program sites
- Fall 2026 through summer 2027 and beyond
- Mentorship model: same kids, fall to summer
- CDL earned after hire with training and a pay bump
Two Doors In
Who We're Hiring
This is both a thinking and physically intensive role. A Coordinator holds a story arc, a skill progression, a staffing call sheet, a tide table, and the emotional growth of thirty kids in the same head, then adjusts all five before lunch.
That mind usually arrives from one of two directions.
The Trained Skills Educator
You went deep: a nine-month immersion, an instructor certification, or a residential apprenticeship at a school like Wilderness Awareness, Tom Brown's Tracker School, Roots, Boulder Outdoor Survival School, Jack Mountain, Teaching Drum, or Earth Native.
Here the craft becomes the career. Teach bow drill fire, tracking, shelter, and foraging to real kids in real weather, and keep training alongside founders with decades in the field, with a 351-acre forest camp as one of your classrooms.
Kindergartners don't scare you. Neither does February.
The Classroom Teacher
You are a licensed teacher inspired to change the nature of education and learning with old school skills and competencies.
You bring what our field can't easily train: curriculum design, classroom management at scale, parent communication, and full-week stamina. We train you in the skills. Your fluorescent lights become kiln fire and forest canopy, and your certification earns a pay add-on.
Please note: One of our founders dropped out of high school at fourteen after reading Walden. We value demonstrated capability over paperwork.
Two Absolute Requirements
- Authentic Forest Craft. You are inspired by forest crafts, bushcraft, and folk arts and come ready to dive deep into learning them as means of nature connection.
- Professional Educational Experience. You have designed and run a full season of programming yourself. You wrote the plan, taught it, and adjusted it when the day demanded.
Sound like you? Apply now »
Here We Do Hard Things
Why We Teach This Way
Our mission runs against the grain of the modern world. We hold that self is not more important than family. That youth is not the only relevant voice. That humans are not the most important species. If that reads as relief instead of offense, keep going.
Here we do hard things. We transport kids from the city to real wilderness, run in all weather, and teach five-year-olds to carve with real knives, carefully, because grit builds the confidence that consumer comfort never will.
We're called Trackers because tracking is a way of seeing and understanding: reading landscapes, recognizing patterns, noticing what everyone else walks past. It shapes what and all we teach.
Kids grow up here inside our Four Guilds, a story that feels timeless and offers context to the myriad of what we teach.
Rangers
East · Wind · Be Ready
They hold sacred the arts of forest craft, honing wilderness survival, tracking, and awareness. Rangers move invisibly like the Wind.
Mariners
West · Water · Be Gritty
They sail by salty trade and wisdom, fishing and foraging, charting a course by stars, currents, and tides. Mariners Respect the Waters.
Wilders
South · Earth · Caretakers
They tend plants, trees, and creatures, guiding the needs of people into harmony with every season. Wilders root in and Restore the Earth.
Artisans
North · Fire · The Team
Ringmasters of humor, heart, and wisdom, they craft at forge and kiln and share the stories that teach us to Do It Better. Artisans keep the hearth Fire burning.
The Guilds come from our stories. And we teach by lore because it's the oldest delivery system humans have for skills and experience. The programs you help design become chapters in that story.
Not Your Average Tuesday
The Work Itself
Every Coordinator's year is different. Days like these come from real Trackers programs:
- Facilitating a 24-hour stealth scenario where teams move unseen through the forest
- Leading an expedition to the Oregon coast for tidepools and coastal foraging
- Co-facilitating a survival shelter weekend with our top instructors and founders, where kids sleep in shelters they built with no sleeping bag
- Teaching snow shelters on a mountain expedition
- Tracking and finding a herd of elk with kindergartners
- Mentoring teens as they step up to help lead younger campers
A few scenes from the field. The full list runs longer than this page.
Kids who started with us at six are now the teenagers younger campers look up to. You help build the year that makes that arc happen.
The Year You'll Hold
The Programs
After School
Approximately 170 program days across 36 weeks, about five afternoons a week. A large team and kids who see you almost daily.
Homeschool Apprenticeship
24 program days, one full day a week per group. Deep skill progressions with the same crew all year.
Weekend Apprenticeship
9 field days, one weekend a month. Nine days is all your kids get with you, so every date on the schedule matters.
Break & Summer Camps
Everyone at Trackers works break and summer camps as our core programming. The ability to help facilitate our 20-year model is non-negotiable.
These are mentoring programs. The educator who starts with a group in September finishes with them in June and continues them at scale through summer.
Your Week Includes Next Summer
Program days are only part of the role. A dedicated portion of your school-year hours goes to planning the following summer: designing curriculum, building schedules and logistics, and helping cast the staff who will run it. When your kids arrive at camp in June, they walk into a season you spent the year building.
Own the Day
What You're Responsible For
First, you help plan the season: curriculum arcs, skill benchmarks, story immersions, and weekly program plans your team can execute with confidence. The rest follows the Trackers Program Guide every staff member trains on.
Safety
Maintain constant situational awareness across students, staff, activities, and site conditions. Enforce safety practices, make timely calls, and respond early to risk or changing conditions.
Operations
Own the day as a live-action, intensive operation. Schedules, communications, transitions, coverage, gear, vehicles, and staging stay tight so programs run on time at high quality, in all weather.
Stewardship
Protect the health of our students, staff, and land. Keep people and places cared for, ensure hydration and nourishment routines happen, and uphold Trackers behavior management standards.
Leadership
Coach Guides and Interns in real time. Correct bad habits early and model strong instruction in the field. Communicate directly with families, and keep building your own Trackers skills, because your mentoring is only ever as deep as your own skillset.
Creative authority at Trackers is earned, and it is real. Learn the form, prove you can hold it, and you end up directing programs going places and doing things you never expected to craft.
Salaried Leadership Role
Pay & Compensation
$840–$1,056 per week
Set within the Coordinator range based on approved certification add-ons, including state teaching certification, Wilderness First Responder, 9-month wilderness immersion programs, CyberTracker certification, and CDL with passenger endorsement.
Schedule & Structure: Program year runs fall 2026 through summer 2027 leadership placement. Weekly structure varies by program assignment.
Built for the Field
Readiness & Requirements
This is a hands-on role. Physical demands vary by program assignment. Reasonable accommodations may be available for qualified individuals.
In the Field
- Lift, carry, and pack up to 50 lbs; hike 10–20 miles a day across uneven, off-trail terrain while supervising youth
- Supervise year-round in heat, cold, rain, and snow; operate in heat index to 104°F and AQI 69–150 with modified breaks
- Arrive with insulated, waterproof clothing and footwear; ride van or bus transport with students, including long, noisy rides
In the Studio & Workshop
- Lift and move up to 50 lbs of tools and materials; stand and move between workstations for 3–5 hours
- Use equipment with safe control and attention to detail while supervising students
- Maintain shop safety protocols in active, noisy studio environments
Required Certifications
- CPR, First Aid, and emergency allergy response, or ability to obtain before start
- Mandated Reporter Training (Oregon; 18+)
- Background check and references
- Complete required Trackers trainings (paid)
Driving — Key to This Role
- Valid driver's license held 2+ years: required. Our programs run on transport
- CDL Class B with passenger endorsement: required, earned within 4 months of hire. Training available, and it triggers the CDL pay bump
- 21+ with a clean MVR (past 3 years, no major violations)
Hiring Is Casting
How to Apply
STEP 1
Apply
Send your background, your credential or training history, and one example of a program season you designed yourself.
STEP 2
The Audition
Finalists teach a live demo with kids and staff observing. We learn more watching you teach than any interview could tell us.
STEP 3
The First 90 Days
Every new hire starts with a 90-day mutual fit period: onboarding, training, feedback, and clear shared expectations.
Employment is at-will, and this posting is not a contract.
Picture an arrow moving so fast it seems unstoppable. That's the modern world. We are working to turn it. If you are too, apply.
APPLY NOW