Career Opportunities

If you are looking for a company with opportunity, integrity and excitement, an organization that offers challenging career growth and the training and the support you need to succeed, look no further.

At Santiam Crossing we go to great lengths to hire and retain quality staff. Our weekly trainings, flexible scheduling, and open-management style enable our employees to stay abreast of the latest industry information, enjoy quality personal time, and to have a voice in business operations. This creates a healthy work environment that permeates the company, contributing to career satisfaction.

Career Opportunities:

Adventure Life Skills Youth Counselor

Program and Job Description: Santiam Crossing is an innovative, five-year-old outdoor base camp program providing adolescent treatment that combines experiential and classroom education, outdoor adventure and high quality therapy. The non-profit school is located in a beautiful forested creek valley at the western edge of the Cascade Mountains, near Albany, Oregon. Base camp provides simple tent platform (similar to a yurt) living and school buildings. Two weekends each month are adventure activities (one of which includes high level certification training in various activities for both staff and students), one weekend is an outdoor service weekend, and one is a family meeting weekend. Our students are 14-18 years of age, working on emotional, behavioral and substance abuse issues. They have all attended a wilderness therapy program for several weeks prior to coming to Santiam Crossing, where they average seven months in residence. We provide an intensely therapeutic program, individualized credit-recovery academics and great outdoors experiences and skills in an atmosphere of openness and respect both for our students and among our staff.

Responsibilities: Youth counselors work eight days on/six days off. Four days each week are spent on the campus, assisting with youth direction and behavior management, school and therapy work during the day; while mornings and evenings are spent with a living group assisting with cooking, self-care and homework. Counselors sleep in the tent platforms with the students. Academically driven adventure programming begins on Thursdays and continues thru Sunday including rock climbing, mountain biking, horseback riding, whitewater rafting and back-country skiing as well as participation in our Professional Development Certification Program (PDCP). Service weekends include trail maintenance and volunteer opportunities in local communities. Counselors become both advocates and healthy authority figures for the students. Counselors build strong relationships through consistently mentoring students throughout their school stay. Counselors receive supervision and training from masters level therapists.

Qualifications: Two years of substantial post-college work experience, adolescent experience including summer camps, treatment programs or teaching. At least 50 days of outdoor leadership or comparable experience (e.g., Peace Corps), comfortable living and working outdoors; skill competency in our adventure activity areas strongly preferred. Current First Aid/CPR. WFR preferred. Must be both emotionally and relationship sensitive, and able to be assertive with adolescents in managing behavior. Willing to energetically engage in training in wilderness adventure, clinical and substance abuse issues, behavior management and experiential education. Current staff use these words to describe important staff characteristics: positive, energetic, patient, consistent, creative, empathic, flexible, resilient, team player, open to feedback, loves outdoors living and activities, hard working. Must be willing to make an18-month commitment.

Benefits: Meaningful work in a beautifully setting. Opportunity to develop skills in therapy, teaching and adventure activity guiding and to become a Certified Alcohol and Drug Counselor. Medical, dental, 401k, vacation, professional training. Starting annual salary: $24,000.

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High School Teacher (Non Traditional)

Job Description: Facilitate individualized academic planning for our students in close coordination with parents, staff, and students. Instruct and assist students doing independent, self paced academic curriculum. Work as team member within larger student programming which integrates individual and family therapy as well as rigorous academically based adventure and service curriculum in a boarding school setting. Help students become responsible for their own learning. Manage behaviors common to students with academic difficulties. This position works a weekday schedule and includes opportunities for some weekend service and adventure trips.

School Description: Santiam Crossing (www.santiamcrossing.com) is located on 157-acres in the Oregon foothills of the Cascade Mountains. Our not-for-profit wilderness-based therapeutic boarding school provides families with a treatment option that is less than one year in length, therapeutically intensive, and that enables students to catch up academically.

Our curriculum is designed to engage our young students in the process of understanding themselves, appreciating their families, realizing what they want in life, and helping them to achieve those goals through hard work and managing their own behavior. Graduates leave Santiam Crossing ready to make appropriate and healthy lifestyle choices, are committed to their recovery, and are able to experience academic success in another setting. Student teacher ratio is typically between 9:1 and 14:1.

The regular on campus school week is Mon. – Thurs. year round with 4 ten day breaks. Students participate in weekend adventure and service learning trips and 4 ten day adventure trips per year.

Qualifications: Oregon State Teaching License. Endorsement in math, language arts or social sciences.

Prefer: Experience with troubled adolescents. Administrative endorsement. Good organizational, communication and behavioral management skills. Outdoor experience.

Salary: Salary DOQ. Health benefits. 401(k). Meaningful work in beautiful surroundings.

Send Resume to:
Ingrid Cooley
c/o Santiam Crossing
PO Box 1064
Albany, OR 97321
Email: info@cfreer.com
541-812-0116