Continuing Education

SPECIAL EVENTS

The Delicate Connection of People and the Biology of the Rainforest: Implications for Curriculum (Grades 5-8)
This is a two-week field course in partnership with The Monteverde Institute situated in the mountain-cloud forest of Costa Rica. The object of this course is to give teachers the experience of actually living in a rainforest, so that they will be able to construct a meaningful, unsentimental, and accurate curriculum for their classrooms on the issues surrounding land reform and saving the rainforest. Students will go into the rainforest for intensive days of first-hand explorations of the nature of this unique ecosystem; onto the farms to examine the problems of subsistence farming and land reform, and the effect these have on rainforest preservation; into local schools to acquire insight into a unique culture. There will be opportunities for encounters with the local flora and fauna (bats, butterflies, birds, frogs, snakes, insects, plants, trees, vines, flowers) as well as for an examination of the ecosystems of the forest. Students will develop a curriculum for use in the classroom.

Susan Wu is an environmental educator in the Tiorati Workshop for Environmental Learning at Bank Street College. She uses a science inquiry-based approach on field trips for children in grades K-7 to various nature sites. Susan has a background in biology and has worked in the education department of the Tech Museum of Innovation, an interactive science museum in San Jose, CA

Dates: July 21 - August 3

Cost:
2 credits, travel, lodging, and most meals $3,500
3 credits, travel, lodging, and most meals $4,100

To receive further information about dates, fees, registration and other details:
Call Joy Ellebbane at 212/875.4707 or
Email jellebbane@bankstreet.edu

The Touchstone Center in association with
New Perspectives at Bank Street College
and Wave Hill presents

The Necessity of Childhood

A series of informal conversations centered on the importance of strengthening the intuitive, imaginative and expressive capacities of childhood - and the role they play in children's learning and understanding.

Moderated by Richard Lewis, author of

Living by Wonder: The Imaginative Life of Childhood and the Founder and Director of

the Touchstone Center for Children

The Child as Child

A conversation on the instinctive abilities of children to explore their worlds through their play and imaginative creations. The conversation will feature William Crain, author of Reclaiming Childhood and Barbara Feinberg, author of Welcome to Lizard Motel: Children, Stories and the Mystery of Making Things Up.

March 5^th

Bank Street College

10 to 12 PM

The Play of Imagining:

A conversation based on the ideas of the eminent French philosopher, Gaston Bachelard, author of The Poetics of Reverie: Childhood, Language and the Cosmos.  The conversation will feature Joanne Stroud, editor of the Gaston Bachelard Translation Series of the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture, and Susan Kinsolving, poet, teacher, and author of The White Eyelash.

May 7^th

Bank Street College

10 to 12 PM

The Unfolding of Nature

A conversation with Noah Baen,  Leader

of Wave Hill's Family Art Project, on the need

of children to participate, imaginatively and artistically, in the natural world. Participants are welcome to observe a family art workshop in the afternoon centered around a performance by The Touchstone Center Theatre Ensemble of In the Space of the Sky, written by Richard Lewis and illustrated by Debra Frasier.

June 4^th

Wave Hill

10 to 12 PM

Single admission:

$10 per conversation

$25 for entire series

Because of limited seating reservations must be made directly with The Touchstone Center

141 East 88^th Street

New York, NY 10128

212-831-7717

rlewis212@aol.com

or through

www.touchstonecenter.net

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