Welcome

Last year's trip to Costa Rica showed us that education can, and should, be a life-altering experience. This year, a largely new group of students, have decided to learn about and travel to Puerto Rico. With this new topic and destination in mind, we have developed a year-long interdisciplinary class that is based on the same three core principles:

1) Travel to expand students' horizons
2) An explicit connection between the classroom and real world
3) The use of sweat equity for students to see that their efforts can make a difference

During the early fall, the curriculum was largely focused on developing the 21st Century Skills of problem solving, critical thinking, decision-making, and collaboration. This was initially done using group challenges in the classroom, but then became vitally important once we started raking lawns. In addition to being our major fundraiser, this hard work put students in positions that required group problem solving, as well as perseverance and responsibility – traits that we all know are central to changing the trajectory of their lives.

During the winter and spring, each student will be developing an independent research project on a chosen aspect of Puerto Rico. We hope that you will keep checking back as we share our learning, growth and adventures.

Thursday, December 22, 2011

Joshua's Reflection

Hi, my name is Josh. I was part of last year’s trip to Costa Rica, and now this year’s trip to Puerto Rico. Some of the things that I learned last year was how to work as a team, how to problem solve better, my strengths and weaknesses, and how to work as a unit. This year I worked on enhancing those skill. This year some skills that I learned were Leadership, taking feedback and applying it to needed areas, and the biggest skills of all, respect, understanding of others’ personal issues, and how to support my team better with their struggles. Some of the things that I learned about myself is more of my strengths and my struggles, how well I can perform when under extreme pressure, and how I help keep my peers working through rough times. During the duration of the raking, I learned more about my classmates and their strengths and weaknesses, and how well we work as a team. I am glad to be able to be in a class like this again and hope to enhance my skills, learn new skills along the way, and have the chance to go on another life changing experience.
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