Summer in Costa Rica

We invite you to experience the rainforest in a field-based, 16-day course that explores the Costa Rican rainforest. Through hands-on investigations, discover its unique environment and the community and the culture of the people who live there.

Our goal is to learn how to construct a meaningful, unsentimental, and accurate curriculum on rainforest ecology and the issues surrounding rainforest conservation. To this end we will meet with local people, such as conservationists, farmers, hotel owners, artists, and teachers and visit local schools. We will also meet with expert biologists for hands-on experiences with bats, birds, insects, butterflies, monkeys, flowers, and plants. 

Most of all, you will learn practical and thoughtful ways of teaching children about nature and social studies through inquiry. You will also learn how to teach children about far-away places, including use of technology, so you can explore and teach about the rainforest through an interdisciplinary perspective in your own classroom or museum setting.

Course Name: The Delicate Connection of People & the Biology of the Rainforest: Implications for Curriculum (Grades 2 - 8) TEED648N

Course Dates: August 3 – August 18, 2013

2013 Course prices include airfare, local travel, lodging and most meals:
No credit or 8 CEU $5,075
2 credits $5,575
3 credits $6,625

This course may fulfill your requirement for a course on teaching science (EDUC 551 or EDUC 535) for matriculated Bank Street College students.

Spanish language homestay/study option available before or after the course. 

Mr. Wainwright works independently as an illustrator, writer, instructor for tropical ecology courses, and naturalist guide. He has also worked as a field assistant for research projects on amphibians and butterflies. His publications include five titles in the Costa Rica Field Guide series: Mammals, Reptiles, Amphibians, Tracks, and Cloud Forest Birds. He has illustrated two similar guides for Belize and one for Panama. He has written and illustrated two books: The Natural History of Costa Rican Mammals (2000) and the children's book Jungle Jumble (1997). Currently he is finishing work with a colleague on a compact disc of Costa Rican frog calls.