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.

Monday, April 2, 2012

Titus update

So after Titus molted he was pretty calm for about two weeks. I would go take out his water bowl and he wouldn't attack the tongs or anything. He just seemed like an overall calm spider. Just as I was beginning to think he was mellowing out(to be honest I was starting to miss his personality) he went back to attacking the tweezers and went into a threat display (they raise their front legs into the air to make themselves look bigger.)towards his water bowl.
-Andi