Checking out the Amazon jungle (Photo by Eric Sackler via Brooklyn Daily)
Twenty-five middle school students from Sunset Park recently got the chance to spend a week in the Peruvian Amazon as part of an annual field trip their school sponsors as a special learning experience for the kids, Max Jaeger of Brooklyn Daily reports. The students, from M.S. 136, spent the time in and around the Wild Yarapa Amazon Jungle Lodge outside of Iquitos, Peru.
“They left the cold and the rain and went into this heat and humidity,” said M.S. 136 principal Eric Sackler. “But when we go in, they actually do a lot of hands-on work — see and learn as much as possible from guides and local villagers. It starts from the moment they get onto the plane.”
Indeed, the work began long before they left, the principal said. Each year, the school selects 25 students to take its annual, school-funded trip, then teachers prep kids on their destination’s culture, geography, flora, and fauna with three months of early-morning classes, Sackler said.
On the trip, the kids managed to put all that advance preparation to good use.
Students went bird-watching, transplanted medicinal jungle flora into a lodge garden, and visited two nearby villages to speak with locals and donate school supplies, Sackler said.
M.S. 136 students taking notes in the jungle (Photo by Eric Sackler via Brooklyn Daily)
The school has previously taken students to Mexico, Costa Rica, and Puerto Rico, as well as to the South Dakota Badlands, the Florida Everglades, and Yellowstone National Park.
The principal said he favors trips to Spanish-speaking countries for the benefit of his school’s largely Hispanic population.
“A lot of my kids are Latino, so we look at the Spanish influence on colonization,” he said. “It gives inner city kids an opportunity to experience a whole different way of seeing the world.”
For more on the trip, and the lodge that the kids stayed at – the biggest single group of lodgers yet to visit “Hotel Amazon,” according to New Yorkers Stephan Jablonski and Rusty Johnson, who built it and will be featured in a TV show soon – check out the original article in Brooklyn Daily.