Limited Edition - Custom Trips for Amazing Schools

There was a time when learning was confined to the classroom, and inspiration came from a textbook.

But dynamic and innovative teachers understand that great things happen, when the mortar and brick classroom is enriched with real-world experience.

For these schools, the Earth Explore Foundation offers custom educational programs to Costa Rica, Hawaii, Alaska and the Rockies.  Fully accredited for high school or college credit, these experiences are tailored to deliver active, dynamic learning in real world settings.  As custom experiences, each trip can be crafted to meet the goals of the participating school, which means they are highly flexible to the curriculum needs of the teachers who take part.

The Foundation arranges custom programs year-round, but the number is limited to 20 groups each year.  If you would like more information about the Foundation's custom trips, go to earthexplore.com/customtrips to learn more, or contact Earth Explore toll free at 877.224.3623

   

Kicking off the 2012 season! Now, family trips.

Join us for all new Family Trips by the not for profit Earth Explore Foundation.  Exclusive, educational, exotic, and packed with adrenline and learning.

Partnering with the same world-class organizations we use for our student trips allows us to provide families with life-list destinations, and experience they won't find anywhere else.  Flowing lava, a morning chorus of howler monkeys, stargazing on an active volcano in Hawaii.  Just a few of the highlights.  Interested? 

One of the best features of our trips is that families travel together, and also meet and travel with other like-minded families who share their passions, and interests. 

We're pretty excited.

Learning Trips in Costa Rica and Hawaii - Now for Families Too

For the past dozen or so years, Earth Explore has sent thousands of students and teachers on life-list trips all over the world.  The goal; to have fun and learn about the world.  And for all of those years we've heard from hundreds of parents who tell us they want the same thing for themselves.  They'd like to travel and learn the same way as their kids do.  But as a family.  Together. 

Now, for 2011-2012 Earth Explore is proud to announce our all new Family Trips.  We've been waiting to perfect the right combination of experiences that mix a lot of travel thrills and adrenline, with a real adventure in learning.  And suitable for all members of the family.  And we have.

Our new Family Trips to Costa Rica and Hawaii fit the bill perfectly.  They are active, they are fun, and they are chocked full of learning, imparted by experienced, warm and knowledgable guides whom we've been using on our student programs for many years.  We couldn't be more proud of what our Family Trips offer to parents looking for a true adventure, and a real learning experience suitable for everyone.

And one more thing.  One of the best features of our Family Trips is your opportunity to meet, socialize, and travel with other great families who share your love of travel, and of learning along the way.  And yes, you can invite families you know to join you on the adventure.

So if you're a family looking for adventure mixed with real learning, you should check out what we offer.  We're experts on kids, so we know how to keep your whole family having fun, and learning something along the way.  Earth Explore Family Trips

New Adventures for 2012!

With the great success of our programs to Costa Rica and Hawaii's Big Island, we're thinking big!

We're now offering winter and spring break trips, to our warmest, most tropical destinations.  They also happen to be our most popular.  And offering trips in the winter and spring months mean more opportunities for students and adults to witness some amazing natural wonders with Earth Explore.

Earth Explore is expanding the opportunities students (and adults) will enjoy on each of our most popular trips with new and exciting activities.  On our Hawaii trip, our students will venture close to the latest lava flows coming off of the new vents in the very active East Rift Zone of Kilauea.  Our first students there raved about the experience!  As we do this activity in the evening, the glow of lava is one of the attractions that make this a life list experience!  We are also heading up, way up, Mauna Kea for a look at the heavens.  Our students reach more than 9 thousand feet when they go stargazing on Mauna Kea, literally within sight of the world-class telescopes on the peak at more than 13 thousand feet!  Our guides make some pretty big scopes available as well...12 inch and larger.  Since the site is above the clouds, away from the lights, and at a high elevation, the seeing conditions are remarkable.  Computer guided scopes allow our students to see first-hand celestial objects they would never witness otherwise.

In Costa Rica, our opportunities for witnessing green sea turtle nesting along the Caribbean coast are better than ever, as we are offering trips in July that take place at the height of the nesting season.  Literally hundreds of turtles haul themselves up the beach sands to lay their eggs.  Our guides are local experts whose job is to protect the turtles, and get visitors up close with these noble animals...which encourages conservation.  The experience of standing on a dark, warm, and breezy tropical beach, while a mother sea turtle lays her eggs just feet away, is nothing short of awesome.  Again, another life list opportunity.

See you in the coming year!

Winter and Spring Break in Costa Rica, Hawaii

We all lead very busy lives.  And that's why Earth Explore has kicked off our new winter and spring break trips for students and teachers.  Because sometimes it's just easier to get away when it's not summer.

And let's face it, in many parts of the country, when snow and blustery weather have been around for months, we need the break.

And what a break.  Our winter and spring break adventures offer the same amazing kind of learning and inspiring travel as our summertime trips.  And academic credit opportunities as well.

If you know of a great teacher, or a great school that is in the hunt for enriching, educational, and relevant real-world travel programs, tell them about us.

Here's where to go:  www.earthexplore.com/layerswinterbreak.html

A Teachable Moment

The huge quake in Japan is first and foremost a human tragedy.  But, what shocks and saddens us, paradoxically, can also inspire teaching.

The quake is one more example of nature's awesome power.  Not surprisingly, once the shock wore off, Earth Science teachers nationwide were looking for way to focus less on the human tragedy, and more on teaching about the science behind what happened.

Huge events galvanize attention.  In that way, they create teachable moments when young minds and attention is focused, however briefly, on an issue of importance.

Science Crisis? Add excitement.

Back in high school I was lucky enough to have a teacher named Mr. Beck.  He would send ball bearings sailing through the air, blow things up, and make students' hair stand on end.   And he'd get you involved.

"Dr. Van Amburg'...he would say, 'could you come to the front of the class to assist in this lesson?"

Science was cool.  But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Last night in his State of the Union address, President Obama, as have all recent national leaders, underscored the great and pressing need for science achievement and competency in a competitive world.

The same day, a huge national assessment of our students' grasp of science showed only 30% of 8th graders, and 21 % of 12th graders rated as proficient.  And only 2% of 8th graders, and 1% of 12th graders qualified as advanced.

What's going on?

Clearly we aren't getting science across in a way that will allow us to, as President Obama says, "win the future." Math and science drive technological innovation, and innovation creates the new industries of the future.  What we don't want, is for those industries to be created, and dominated, by our competitors overseas.

Science has an image problem.

There's no doubt that young people love what science does.  This is embodied the universal appeal of hand-held wonders like  iPad and iPod, their love affair with smart phones, and the explosion of Facebook and all of the rest.  And, what 8th grader doesn't like to send a rocket into the air, or blow something up?  That's science too.

Problem is, students say they don't like to do science at school.   They don't see it as fun, or relevant.  They think it's nerdy.

So it seems to me, this begs the question, "how do we get kids excited about science, and take it from nerdy to coolness?"

One answer, and the one we advocate here at Earth Explore, is to make it a tactile experience.  Make it hands on, and therefore real.

When students are doing science, in the field, they don't think it's nerdy.  They know it's fun, and active, and exciting, and relevant.

While EE programs put kids in beautiful and exciting places with field experts, the same thing can be done in the classroom.  But we have to break the rules.  We have to do more of the learning hands-on.  Blow things up.  Make them boil over.  Make a student's hair stand up with static charge.  And send a rocket into the air. When the weather is good, take a walk in the woods and make the sky, the trees, the soil, and the air part of the lesson plan.

At Earth Explore, we've found that it works.  Science interest grows.  Science becomes the cool thing to do, and not the nerdy subject to be avoided.

Inspiration is Everything

I like to think that at Earth Explore, we're in the inspiration business.  In a half century of living, of watching people of all kinds make changes, and learn new things, the single common place it all begins, is inspiration.

This is especially true of young people.

Kids are eager for inspiration.  We all know about, or once were, the student who was inspired to do more, or to be more, by an especially encouraging, nurturing, or exciting adult.  Maybe it was a teacher, maybe it was a parent, or maybe it was a pastor or rabbi who provided the spark.  But whomever it was, and whatever the spark might have been, that person sent a life into a whole new trajectory, and opened up for that young person a world of possibilities never imagined.

Earth Explore is a tool for inspiration, but it takes people, great people, to provide the spark.  And that's where our teacher chaperones, and our on site educators come in.  They help to get our students excited about what they're doing, in large part by being excited themselves.  They show them the amazing possibilities out there, because, at the end of the day, it is still a wondrous world in which we live.

When you inspire, you provide a great light to another person.  The kind of light that illuminates possibilities in a world that too often is darkened by despair and the opinions of cynics.  And, let's face it.  Nothing great was ever accomplished by through despair, or by making the world more jaded.  But great things have always come, and always will, through simple acts of inspiration.

If you know of an inspiring teacher, or other adult, tell us about them.  http://www.earthexplore.com/

Make this New Year an Opportunity

I'm not much one for preaching.  Except when I've found something that works.  And boy, have I ever. 

This is a post about change. The story begins over a year ago.  It's not new.  Man goes to doctor for checkup, finds he has high cholesterol and low vitamin D levels, and panics.

Now here is where it gets interesting.  But only if you can agree that convention wisdom is just that...conventional.  That sometimes what we have known (or thought we knew) for our whole lives, is, well, wrong.  Consider that at one time we all believed that the world was flat...and you could be burned, yes burned, for disagreeing with that conventional wisdom. 


But let's back up.  Two years ago I had a moderately disappointing cholesterol test.  Just over 200...lousy level of HDL (you know, the good kind).  Curious, I thought.  I'm not overweight, am physically active, and no health issues. 

So, two years ago, I did what I was told.  What conventional wisdom requires.  I virtually cut out cheese, and eggs, ate low fat everything.  Virtually no saturated fat, or cholesterol in the diet.  It was a year of lean, lean, lean.

Fast forward to a year ago.  Doctor emails that my cholesterol has gone from average...to, well, nasty.  That it had shot up by more than 50 points in the past year, and that my levels of vitamin D and good cholesterol were pathetic.

The first day I wandered around the grocery store in a daze.  What could I eat?  It seemed that doing the right thing, had the opposite effect than had been promised.

Out of fear, came action.  I began to read.  Not what had been "known" for so long, but what the latest research was uncovering about the relationship between food, and health.

You know what?  The truth is out there, if you care to find it.  But, for now at least, it isn't the conventional wisdom.  Not yet.  No wonder our nation is facing an obesity crisis, a heart disease crisis, a health crisis, which has been building for the past 50 years.

At this point I'll acknowledge that you probably don't want to read a long post about a "journey to health."  Or how early research upon which our conventional food wisdom was built was well intentioned, but went badly off the tracks.  So let me sum it up for you clearly, and without confusion.

Carbohydrates = Fat in the Body, and Fat in the Blood, and High Cholesterol.

There it is.  From grains (yes, bread and rice), to sugary drinks, to pasta in every form, to chips, and cake, we just eat too much of it.  We didn't evolve the body systems to handle it.  Our early forebears didn't have access to it.  But in our country, and in most others, there are billions of dollars at stake each day in making sure we continue to overindulge in these things.  Think Coke, Pepsi, Frito Lay, Archer Daniels Midland.

Now I'll admit.  It's hard to believe that a loaf of bread can be evil.  Really, a loaf of bread??  That a potato can be like sugar.  I know.  I am just here to tell you that, that is precisely how the body sees it.  They are all carbohydrates, and are converted to sugar, and then to triglicerides, then to cholesterol, and then to the bad cholesterol, in our livers, and in our blood stream.

So, unless you're running a daily marathon, or riding a 100 miles on your bike and can burn them, consider cutting back.  If you make a real change, I guarantee you'll feel, and see, the difference.

If you'd like to read more about this topic, look up "Good Calories, Bad Calories" by Gary Taubes, and check out the Heart Scan Blog by noted cardiologist Dr. William Davis Heart Scan Blog, or check out The Healthy Skeptic Blog