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  Hola from Costa Rica! We’re now a week and a half into the second term of our 2014-15 school year, and positive vibes are the order of the day. Our upper classes have made the UGA Costa Rica campus their home for the next couple of months to focus on their International Baccalaureate coursework. Our ninth and tenth grade classes, on the other hand, have the distinction of having...

    New Zealand’s diverse terrain is an unparalleled playground for the wild at heart, and many of its 4 million residents crave the thrills that come with mountain biking, kayaking, bungee jumping, and zorbing (rolling down mountains and hills in a giant inflated hamster ball for those of us living on flat land). Spanish teacher Sam Nelson and his grade 11 students decided to embrace the spirit of adventure...

As our faculty, staff, and students begin arriving in Costa Rica for the second term of our 2014-15 school year, we thought we’d share seven interesting facts about this happy-go-lucky nation of nearly five million residents. Whether you are working on a school project or just looking to impress your friends, these facts will have everyone convinced that you’re a tico or tica! Fact #1: Thanks, but no tanks. Costa...

Listen to the roundtable discussion: With the new year upon us, we’ve reached the midway point of another school year. Six months in, our first-year students have had a good amount of time to adjust to a life where the next opportunity for travel is usually right around the corner. Our first term, which took place in New Zealand, was full of such opportunities and included three weeks devoted specifically...

The newspaper is a greater treasure to the people than uncounted millions of gold. -Henry Ward Beecher For those of us with short attention spans, an invite to a newsroom is likely similar to unwrapping a golden ticket to Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory: countless televisions trumpet the news of the day, innumerous phone conversations play out as facts are checked and new leads come in, and row after row of...

Although it truly feels like our school year just began, reality dictates that in less than a month our students will be back at home for the winter holidays, sharing stories about their time in New Zealand with their family and friends. The best stories culminate from amazing experiences, though, and this week is devoted to giving our students experiences that they’ll want to share again and again. With that...

  It’s been two months since we arrived in Auckland, New Zealand, and our students have now had time to move beyond simply being visitors in a new land to rightfully categorizing themselves as full-fledged locals. Their opinions have been carefully formulated through trial and error as to who has the best coffee when its time to hit the books and which record store to hit up for the best...

Question: Have you recently fallen out of touch with someone you were once very close with? As time goes by and our social circles grow, it seems like an unfortunate inevitability. But that doesn’t mean it has to be permanent. During our recent weeklong weXplore trip to the Bay of Plenty, New Media Lab teacher Lindsay Clark decided to rekindle a lost connection for each of her accompanying students by...

    TEDxTeen sketchnote by Brad Ovenell-Carter   The conversationalist. The model. The climber. The writer. The environmentalist. The programmer. The retail entrepreneur. The managing director. The violinist. The bionic boy. The bully beater. At first glance these labels might seem like an odd grouping: Where would they have met? What would their conversations revolve around? These questions have simple answers, but ones that are very telling: Each of the...

  Kia Ora, everyone! Our fifth year is officially underway, and judging by our students' reaction so far, it’s poised to be a stellar one. Where as last year we began the school year in one of the most densely populated countries in the world (India), this year our adventure begins in a land where sheep and cattle both far outnumber the inhabitants: Yep, that's right, we're in New Zealand!...