The 8th grade will open the year with a trip to the Mountain Trail Outdoor School at Camp Kanuga, in Hendersonville, NC. This program uses environmental and outdoor/adventure education to teach and inspire students to care for the environment around them, both the natural and human resources.

In November, Durham Academy 8th grade travels to the North Carolina coast. The purpose of the trip is twofold: to get to know each other and to experience and initiate the study of coastal and barrier island habitats that are our first unit of study in Science 8.

The focus of the Grade 9 trip is "getting back to nature" and heightening the sensitivity of everyone to our native and natural heritage. To that end, freshmen spend 2 1/2 days with Eustace Conway, the founder of Turtle Island Preserve, a large land preserve just outside Boone, N.C. While there, students and teachers sleep on the ground in tents, eat underneath a large mess tent, watch organic food being prepared over open fires, use outdoor latrines and participate in a variety of activities, all of which focus on the primitive and creative nature of early Americans.

The focus of the Grade 10 trip is fivefold: first, and most important, is to gain an appreciation for group problem solving dynamics and in the process gain respect, tolerance and sensitivity for fellow classmates – especially those within one’s own advisory.

The Civil Rights Tour is a departure from the usual outdoor education experiences students have had heretofore. We expect to meet with the foot soldiers of the movement at the various sites we visit in Atlanta, Montgomery, Selma and Birmingham to have the experience of history that can best happen by standing in the places in which it was made. Because this is a more emotional than physical experience, we will be holding nightly debriefing and reflection sessions in advisory groups.

Since the fall of 1979, the senior class at Durham Academy has begun the school year with a wilderness adventure that seeks to challenge each student both physically and emotionally as a way to help students better understand and appreciate who they are, what they are capable of and what responsibility to self and others entails.