Twin Rivers Charter School
Twin Rivers Charter School (TRCS) is a 4J public charter school serving grades 8-12 in Eugene, OR. There is no tuition fee and you do not need to live within the 4J district to attend. A diploma earned here is the same as from any comprehensive high school.
TRCS is part of Northwest Youth Corps, a local non-profit organization that’s been getting youth and young adults outdoors to learn, grow, and experience success for over 40 years. First started as the Outdoor School 18 years ago, Twin Rivers became a public charter in 2016 in order to serve more students. Since then, we’ve continued to grow and evolve with the constant goal of building a school worthy of the hearts and minds of the students we serve.
Classes
Small: With just 15 students in an average class, we build strong relationships with our students.
Personal: Twin Rivers students’ range of skills, perspectives, and interests is what makes our community strong. We believe there’s no one way to be a successful student or human being and we’re excited to help you find yours!
Experiential: Even when we’re not out in the field, we keep things interesting with interdisciplinary, hands-on learning. Whether its running a coffee cart, building water filters, or looking for Bigfoot, we challenge students to make connections in new ways.
Career Focused: Twin Rivers students get real-world experience fields of Outdoor Recreation and Natural Resource Management.
Outdoor Recreation: Students in Outdoor Rec. hone entrepreneurial and technical skills in one of the fastest growing industries in the Pacific Northwest. Whether you want to be a river raft guide, lead backpacking trips, or coordinate outdoor programs, we’ve got you covered.
Natural Resource Management: TRCS students benefit from Northwest Youth Corps’ extensive professional network and deep expertise in the fields of conservation and resource management.
Field Weeks
Students spend one week each month studying, exploring and working outdoors. Rain or shine, field week days are devoted to service work, academics, and recreation.
Service Work: Our service projects are contracted with partners such as the City of Eugene, Bureau of Land Management, and Oregon State Parks. Students get real-world experience while earning scholarship money available to them upon graduation.
Academics: We get unique opportunities to apply the classroom in the field. If we’re studying volcanoes, we head out to Eastern Oregon to climb in the Lava Tubes. If we’re studying water rights, we head down the Klamath River to see the dams. Essentially, if we’re learning about something, we want to go see it, smell it, and stand on it.
Recreation: We believe a quality education is best guided by a spirit of adventure, so we take every opportunity to get out and explore. The Pacific Northwest offers rich opportunities for outdoor recreation and we want our students to experience it all: rafting, backpacking, snowshoeing, paddle-boarding and more!
Spikes
Our camping trips, or “spikes,” are the defining feature of the Twin Rivers experience.
For up to 4 weeks every school year, students and staff head out into the woods together. Like field weeks, the days are devoted to service projects, academics, and recreation, but since we don’t have to get back home at night, we can explore much further.
In fact, we traveled over 12,000 miles in the 2023-24 school year!
Spikes are the cornerstone of Twin Rivers because they bring together the most important parts of who we are: community, service, learning, and adventure.