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...
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Basecamp Shoving 100 wet wipes into a skinny bag with 3 liters of water, rain-proof pants, and the day’s lunch isn’t easy. Though my work “uniform” often calls for a back-bending pack of gear, I felt like a fumbling mess trying to make this little daypack of mine close. Tucked under the awning from the misty rain, I tried to pull myself together, baggage- and emotion-wise, to start mobilizing a...
Read MoreWhen the 11th grade Anthropology class of THINK Global School began their unit on Marriage and Sexuality, teacher Nick Martino called for a creative output product. Four weeks later, a twenty minute long Bachelor spoof had been planned, shot, edited and privately showed to the TGS community. It is now released to the public, serving as a simultaneously entertaining and informative anthropological video. In order to preserve the humorous nature...
Read MoreThe 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...
Read MoreDuring our recent weXplore expedition to New Zealand’s South Island, Mother Nature tried to break our spirits from the get-go. We launched into the waters surrounding Abel Tasman National Park during a building rainstorm, our group taking a water taxi south of Separation Point and landing on the beach at Totaranui. We unloaded our gear from the boat and began to haul it to our first campsite, where students began...
Read MoreThis past week our grades 9 and 10 students had the opportunity to meet with Executive Chef Jinu Abraham in his kitchen at Hectors Restaurant in Auckland, New Zealand. Chef Jinu has earned renown across New Zealand for his commitment to the Good Food Project, which centers around promoting sustainable food that is locally sourced and healthy dining. It was an informative and interactive couple of hours, and Chef Jinu...
Read MoreOur first class sessions of the 2014-15 school year involved a basic overview of what my goals for the course were, and I quickly shared my vision that the grade ten students create meaningful and engaging projects that deal with our local and global community. We started by discussing mission statements and worked for two entire class periods, finally coming together in agreement that: “By reaching out to the local...
Read MoreAlthough 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...
Read MoreIt’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...
Read MoreQuestion: 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...
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