The Inquiry, Sustainability, and Conservation in the Amazon

Course Rationale

Communities worldwide are asking similar questions-- how do we develop sustainably? How do we interact with place? How do we become connected to our place in the world? How do we use that connection to address issues within our schools? These questions are at the heart of environmental stewardship, place-based education, sustainability, and community-based decision making. The answers depend on educators, administrators, and students becoming responsible stewards, concerned scientists, and informed global citizens. For independent schools to make meaningful change locally and globally, educators need opportunities to participate in transformative models of community action and innovative scientific research and inquiry methods.

The Inquiry, Conservation, and Sustainability (ICS) in the Amazon field course provides these opportunities by taking participants far afield into the world of the indigenous Maijuna, the guardians of Peru’s newest conservation area. Participants will be immersed in this successful conservation story by coming together as partners with the Maijuna in stewardship and global citizenship, using scientific research projects, community mapping initiatives, and ecotourism efforts. They will learn the "Maijuna Model" of community-based action and how to apply it to their own schools. Participants will gain experience in using science, place, and community to better answer the essential questions above in their own schools.

The Maijuna are a people underway and in pursuit of answering these questions. They connect us to the urgent nature of today's critical issues surrounding biodiversity, climate change, and social equity and prosperity. Today, there are only 450 Maijuna individuals left living in four villages in a large, forested area between the Napo and Putumayo Rivers. Maijuna ancestral territory is one of the most biologically rich places on Earth and has also been identified as an area of extremely high carbon stocks, making the area a critically important carbon sink in a world increasingly concerned with and impacted by climate change (One Planet, 2017).

Unfortunately, there are currently a wide variety of threats and challenges to Maijuna lands including logging, hunting, fishing, and illegal resource extraction. In addition, Maijuna traditional biological and ecological knowledge is rapidly disappearing, and Maijuna cultural practices and traditions (i.e., ceremonies, songs, stories, etc.) are also rapidly being lost. If this trend is not reversed soon, a significant portion of Maijuna cultural traditions will be irreversibly lost within the near future. Most importantly, however, is the fact that the Maijuna recognize and are cognizant of the degradation of their traditional knowledge, cultural traditions, and biological resources and are currently taking steps to ensure the survival of their biocultural resources (Gilmore 2005; Gilmore et al. in press). The formation of the Maijuna-Kichwa Regional Conservation Area (MKRCA) was the first step in helping the Maijuna to protect their ancestral lands. The ICS in the Amazon field course furthers this effort through participant support of and engagement in sustainable development and conservation research projects associated with Maijuna-Kichwa Regional Conservation Area (MKRCA) and adjacent buffer zones and protected areas, including the Amazon Conservatory For Tropical Studies (ACTSPeru) canopy walkway field station and reserve.

This partnership builds capacity for the Maijuna to innovatively and continuously address the challenges they face. Similarly, independent school participants gain capacity to return to their own schools with renewed inspiration and skills for classroom learning and school-wide initiatives.

Click HERE for the full syllabus!

Amazon Rainforest Workshops Study Sites

Program Leaders

Ava Goodale, Millbrook School, Millbrook, NY
Ava is the Science Department Chair and Director of Sustainability at Millbrook School, a small boarding school located in Millbrook, New York with its own AZA accredited zoo and canopy walkway. She teaches advanced biology, environmental science, and independent research, as well as coordinating the Department’s Modeling Instructional Curriculum. Before her teaching career, Ava’s professional experiences involved conservation management, tropical ecology, and field biology. She graduated from Cornell University’s Natural Resources Department, where she was able to participate in a research program with the Kayapo Indians of Brazil.

Michael (Mike) Hill, PhD, Asheville School, Asheville, NC
Mike attended his first Amazon Rainforest Workshop in July 2017, and fell in love with the place--so much so that he has helped create a special program for independent school teachers! He has been the Math Department Chair at Asheville School since 2004, and he currently teaches AP Statistics and AP Environmental Science. After studying engineering for his B.S. and M.S. degrees, Mike completed his Ph.D. in Educational Research Methodology at the University of Virginia in 1999. He worked for seven years in the textile industry, and in 2001, Mike transitioned to the independent school world, accepting a math teaching position at Kent School, in Kent, CT. In 2015, Mike completed an M.S. Natural Resources at the University of Missouri. He has taught in a wide variety of settings, from the independent school classroom, to the manufacturing floor, to the playing fields, to the forests of Western North Carolina … and now in the Peruvian Amazon.

Program Faculty

2020 faculty to be announced soon!  

STUDY SITES

Explorama Lodges

ACTSPeru

PARTNERS

CONAPAC Peru

Amazon Library

Yanamono Medical Clinic

One Planet

CITIZEN SCIENCE

iNaturalist

eBird

Project Noah