Teacher as Student

Posted on March 27, 2011 by Tim 1 Comment

Many years ago, I was visiting Rara Avis lodge and preserve in Costa Rica to herp with my good friend, Twan Leenders, who at the time was the station manager. Unbeknownst to me he was involved in the Forman School Rainforest Project and my couple day stay overlapped with their project. The Rainforest Project takes a group of high school students from 3 Connecticut high schools up to Rara Avis for a couple of weeks and puts them into one of several projects dealing with rainforest ecology. The program has been going on for 19 years now. And on my first visit Twan, project coordinator Wendy, renowned birder Frank, and teacher extraordinaire April, were most gracious with their time and gave me access to see the project and have minimal involvement. My involvement kind of creeped up on all of us such that for the last 4 years I have participated in the full 2 week stay. Mostly, I assist with the reptile and amphibian team. But even then I have found ways to make sure that all the ‘kids’ have a chance to tag along on night hikes or any of the quite long herping forays our team takes into the forests.

 

Brandon, Walker, and Vince start their work by learning how to identify reptiles and amphibians, here a Sibon nebulatus, and then recording biological data.

 

Colin and Dominique collect data from their stream samples.

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