Part of this Toyota International Teacher Program includes visiting schools in the Galapagos. All of the school visits were arranged for Thursday, October 4th on the island of Santa Cruz. Five of us were assigned to the Colegio Miguel Angel Cazares, a middle/high school in Puerto Ayora. We were welcomed at the school gate with open arms.
The principal, assistant principal, and a science teacher took us on a tour of the garden area and greenhouse. The school is working on several environmental projects, one of them pertaining to native and endemic plants and introduced species. The students grow hundreds of plants from seeds and cuttings. As the plants grow, they are transplanted on the school grounds. All of these plantings are endemic or native plants, meaning they are naturally found on this island or in Ecuador.
In the meantime, the students have been getting rid of the introduced species on the school grounds. Introduced species cause trouble for the native species because they usually out compete the native species and spread rather quickly. The school in also working on an ecological path that will wind its way around the school grounds and to an outdoor classroom. This outdoor classroom is situated in a small volcanic crater. The students are clearing the underbrush so that they can install ampitheater seating made out of the native rock and cement. They expect their outdoor classroom to be ready by 2008. One of the attractions of the location of this outdoor classroom is that natural geographic strata are visible in one section of the wall. This entire project is being funded by a Toyota grant awarded to the school as a result of last year’s teacher forum.
The staff at the Colegio Miguel Angel Cazares is very enthusiastic about the possibility of communicating and sharing student work from Harrington Middle School. The school was also given an Apple laptop to help facilitate communication between the United States schools and the schools in the Galapagos.
The teachers that joined me at the Colegio Miguel Angel Cazares were Shannon Hill from the John Cooper School in the Woodlands, Texas, Kelli Ramer from the New York State School for the Deaf, Joe Green from the Pope High School in Marietta, Georgia, and Preston Lewis who teaches at the South Carolina School for the Deaf and Blind.
Picture link: http://www.mtlaurelschools.org/administration/mbpage.php
