Mary Westlund, fourth grade teacher, Judi Locicero, fifth grade teacher, and Anna Hadgis, Assistant Principal have been awarded a Fund for Teacher Grant to research environmental and ecological literacy by traveling to Costa Rica in late July. The team will attend the International Reading World Congress in San Jose to begin their investigations of best practices shared by scholars and professionals from around the globe. While attending the International Reading World Congress, the team hopes to increase their understanding of issues pertaining to literacy worldwide, while also increasing awareness of environmental, historical and anthropological literacy. After the reading conference ends, the team will head into the Rain Forest, deep within the Arenal Volcano National Park. Here the team will hike through secondary forests and old lava formations from previous eruptions and experience the nightly lava flows. Our focus will be on both the destructive and live-giving effects of volcanic eruptions on the surrounding environment. We will study the ability of ecosystems to restore themselves in the aftermath of volcanic eruptions. These experiences will be used as the basis for lesson plans for teaching earth science.

While in Costa Rica, the team will also travel to Guayabo National Monument. This archaeological site encompasses a significant area of tropical rainforest. Here the team will observe the layout of a pre-Columbian village, which housed an estimated 1500 to 2000 people at its peak. We will view preserved bamboo living structures and 2,000 year old aqueducts still in working condition. Our focus will be to study the society that lived here between 1000 B.C.E and 1400 C.E. when the city was mysteriously abandoned. At Costa Rica's most valuable archaeological site the Russell Byers School team expects to learn much about the roadways, aqueducts, tombs, the foundations of homes, and petroglyphs used by these peoples. The artifacts found at this location will be used to design a cross-cultural in-depth investigation comparing these ancient peoples to the Anasazi of New Mexico and delineating the unique challenges faced by each group. We will maintain journals, photo logs, and video journals for use by our students in the classroom.