Taking on her 6th year of teaching Outdoor Adventures, Lisa Helm was recently selected as the Outdoor Adventure 2021 Educator of the year. The Outdoors Tomorrow Foundation chooses one outdoor adventure K-12 educator each year for this title.

“I feel very honored and thankful to receive this award.” Lisa Helm said. “Without the support of the administration and the Outdoors Tomorrow Foundation, I would not be receiving this award.”

The Outdoor Adventures class focuses on many different types of outdoor activities, such as camping, paddle sports, archery, orienteering, hunter education, fishing, boater education, water safety, survival skills, and disc golf. This allows students to experience a variety of fields all in one class.

Helm loves to teach her students these new skills, along with the love to help them find their new interests.

“My favorite part is introducing my students to outdoor activities new to them, and then hearing, “Coach, I found my new passion!” Helm said. “Recently, I just had two former students, Micah Cook and Corbin McDowell, visit with me to learn more about backpacking.”

Helm’s teaching reaches out to her students as they feel she is very dedicated and enthusiastic to teach.

“Coach Helm makes the class fun by caring about what she is teaching.” junior Adam Ruelas said. “There are some teachers that you can tell don’t enjoy what they do, but with Coach Helm, you can see that she loves what she does and it translates over to the students enjoying the class well.”

The class starts to form relationships with each other as they undergo these new situations every day in class.

“I love the class support of each other during some of the high adrenaline activities, such as when we have had someone freeze on a high tower while zip-lining or on a rock wall while rock climbing.” Helm said. “The class also shows a lot of teamwork when they gang up on me during archery tag as we shoot each other with foam-tip arrows.

Lastly, Helm has a new overall goal and this year it is to prepare students for encounters that most wouldn’t think of.

“With our fast pace and technology-infused society, I recognized a need to give our students the opportunity to experience some of these fun outdoor activities,” Helm said. “I also hope to start an Outdoor Adventure club this year to take my students to local parks and dive deeper into some of the activities we do in class.”