Guatemala field trip

Feb 17, 2008 17:14

So here is the story: After spending two weeks volunteering in ARCAS - an animal rehabilitation center in Guatemala, we immediately thought we should bring there our 16 year old niece who is very active in the Florida public school system in the preservation of natural environment. We hoped to take her and some of her classmates on a two week field ( Read more... )

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Comments 8

igorlord February 18 2008, 04:36:42 UTC
Good luck, Stusiks! Too bad you even thought to approach a public school system with such an event. Public school systems do not care about anything that is not teaching-to-a-test. If there is no standartised test to assess the knowledge you are going to be providing, the public schools are not interested to spend any of their resources (time and money) on it. You could possibly have a better luck private schools, especially "good" ones. Or maybe some Waldorf school (they are very much into all things outdoorsy).

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ex_marmir959 February 18 2008, 16:58:39 UTC
I disagree. Many good public schools jump at an opportunity to organize trips that look good on college applications (and volunteering for an animal rehabilitation center in Guatemala certainly foots the bill). The problems, I suspect, are more of logistical/ legal nature. Working with wild animals inherently presents certain risks, and the school does not want to be responsible if something (G-d forbid) bad does happen.

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igorlord February 19 2008, 04:01:53 UTC
I wonder what public schools would do that. I may be very misinformed, but my understanding is that public schools are less interested in college admissions statistics vs test scores. Private schools, on the other hand, care about the admissions a lot more (and some do not even participate in most of the standartised testing).

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ex_marmir959 February 19 2008, 04:21:10 UTC
Top tier public schools care about college admissions a lot. When it comes to the test scores, there isn't too much difference between Weston and Newton schools - they are all very high. The number of students who go to Ivy League, OTOH, is something the school can boast about; furthermore, when we're talking about schools in well-to-do neighborhoods, they need to lure the students of rich parents who might otherwise send their offsprings to a private school - those are the parents who are going to help the school financially when needed.

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vnarod March 27 2008, 17:17:15 UTC
if you get some 13-14 y.o kids, I will send my 13 y.o. daughter.

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stanyslava March 27 2008, 17:30:35 UTC
I wish... people are too scared of the unknown, so after not getting past 4 participants I had to cancel the whole thing.. :(

Anna, our 16 year old niece, is coming here on her spring break, as an alternative, to do her Open Water course :)

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vnarod March 27 2008, 17:33:49 UTC
Perhaps, just not so many people know about it? There is always a problem of what to do with kids during the summer, and with camps costing around $1000 a week your idea might sound good.

Why don't you try to suggest it not for 16 y.o., who are busy with college preparation, etc, but for 12-14? I can PR it in my LJ, and so can your other friends.

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stanyslava March 28 2008, 01:51:20 UTC
in my experience with this thing people are really afraid to send their 14 year old to a third world country, even with us. I advertised this thing in so many places/communities already... If we do something like this again I'll tel you know :)

plus another issue is liability...

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