On Saturday morning, 108 ninth graders will board a bus, head north to the Adirondacks, and complete their first graduation requirement – a seven-day wilderness expedition.

The students are in the inaugural class of the Bronx School of Expeditionary Learning, one of the 53 small high schools that debuted Monday.

The school, one of five small academies located within the Taft High School building, is the first of eight Outward Bound managed schools expected to open in New York City in the next five years.

“The idea is to work with groups of people, give them challenging experiences, and for them to realize there’s more in them than they think,” said an Outward Bound course director, Trevor Harris, as he paced the school’s hallways wearing shorts and sandals.

He said at the school, as at other Outward Bound schools nationwide, teachers are supposed to start out as “information providers” and “direction setters.” Eventually, students are supposed to direct their own learning, using Outward Bound expeditions as a metaphor for learning.

“The teacher doesn’t have to be the sage on the stage,” he said.

That might mean studying the trajectory of water from a fountain to learn about math, or studying how a lobster breathes under water to learn about science, he said.

The school’s principal, Joshua Solomon, 36, worked for the U.S. Forest Service for four years after college in Alaska, building salmon ladders, and he said he always loved the outdoors.

But while he said the outdoors element of the school was attractive, the most important attribute of the school for him was size.

“I wanted to be principal of a school where I really could connect with the kids,” he said. “I felt if I went to a larger school, I wouldn’t have that opportunity.”

Mr. Solomon grew up in the city, at tending private schools. After five years of investment banking, he decided to switch to education.

He spent a year at the Dalton School while he earned his teaching degree. Then he taught at Frederick Douglass Academy before accepting a job as a math and Japanese teacher at the Young Women’s Leadership School of East Harlem.

A few years later, he became the school’s assistant principal. He said he had earned an MBA before he entered the business world, and always knew he wanted to get involved in school management. When he heard about Expeditionary Learning, he jumped at the chance.

The school has six teachers. The staff will double next year as a new class of ninth-graders enters.

Although Expeditionary Learning has more hands-on learning than some schools, its basic academic program is a lot like others throughout the city. Students have an hour each of math and science, and two hours of humanities, which is a combination of English and history, each day. They also have 35 minutes of something called “crew” where they work on building study skills and community building.

Yesterday morning, Cheryl Sims’s crew section was full of questions and fears about the upcoming orientation trip, during which they will hike, canoe, rock climb, and swing on ropes courses.

One student said she’d heard there might be snakes, bears, and “poison animals.” A boy chipped in that it was probably too cold for bugs up in the mountains.

“I would say bring the bug juice, just in case,” Ms. Sims warned.

One student, Neshaya Dozier, 14, said she was scared she wouldn’t have enough privacy and wouldn’t be able to bring the beauty products, like hair lotion and perfume, she’s used to. Plus, she said, digging a hole that will substitute for a bathroom sounds “nasty and weird.”