Costa Verde International School will provide sustainable education for the children of our community.

Costa Verde Sustainable Resource Center will ignite a learning community, encouraging residents to search for and solve the problems relevant to our community.

Costa Verde Cultural Center will bring the world to Sayulita by providing opportunities to understand other customs, art, dance, music, and languages from within Mexico and around the Earth.

“We have a unique opportunity to proliferate ecological learning in Mexico.”

We are building more than just a school for children. The community as a whole will reap the benefits. Costa Verde offers an architectural design which takes into consideration the aspects of sustainability, environmental consciousness, green, and organic approaches required to promote an ideal learning environment. These requirements and the characteristics of the school site, its neighborhood context, and the local climate and topography will be considered to create the lowest impact on the environment and provide for general student and community well-being.

1. Eco Curriculum – Teach for the future. The teaching theme is “green”. Interdependence will be integrated into lesson plans for math, language, physical education, art, music, science, and history.

2. Eco Building – Built responsibly. The permanent site will have construction optimized for conservation of our world’s resources. Utilizing materials and building techniques that are friendly to the environment we will lessen our ecological footprint.

3. Eco Power – Go solar. Our solar goal is to equip the school with a large enough solar array not to require assistance from the local power grid.

4. Eco Lighting – Diffuse Sunlight. Roofs will integrate new light funneling technologies to focus sunlight into the learning centers of each classroom. Where lighting is necessary, low wattage energy efficient bulbs will be used.
Sample solar array

5. Eco Cleaning – Clean green. We will utilize only biodegradable cleaning supplies.

6. Eco Play – An incredible playground will be built from recycled materials and renewable resources. A child’s swing will pump water to the garden.

7. Eco Grounds and Gardens – Nature; the outdoor classroom. Plants and trees will exist throughout the school preserving the tropical jungle setting in which the school is nested. Parents, kids, teachers, and the community as well, will care for and cultivate our bio-intensive garden. A composting area has already been started by students enrolled for August 2008.

8. Eco Recycling – Each class will have receptacles for various recyclable materials. We will reuse paper products from the office and classrooms. We will focus on recycling all aluminum, plastic, cardboard products used by the school.

9. Eco Garden – Grow it, eat it. The school will have its own garden, tended by and feeding its students. On site farming will reduce the resource depletion of transporting food into the school.

10. Eco Connection – Share experiences globally. Through computer technology and media, we will share our ecological experiences with others around the world, thus creating awareness and change in social psychology of ecology on a global level.

11. Eco Water – Water is life. Rain water collection will be built into the structure of roofs and runoff areas, enabling the school’s independence from the city water supply. Grey water will be collected and re-used to water plants. Water conservation will be enforced with low flow toilets and faucets.

Co-existing with the jungle, we are surrounded by the environment from which we can learn the most.

CVIS is an ecological, community-oriented, multilingual, multicultural, technological, independent educational institution. CVIS will provide an intellectually stimulating curriculum for initial grades from preschool through 6th with small class sizes. The school office is now open, operating, enrolling students, and CVIS is scheduled to begin classes at the end of August this year, 2008.

In an environment designed to develop the talents and skills particular to each individual, students will analyze and solve problems, rather than simply memorize facts. Our dedicated staff of teachers, personnel and parents will work together to provide a joyful and nurturing atmosphere with a strong commitment to diversity, the surrounding culture, and the education of conserving the resources of the world.

Teaching Methodology

Active Learning: Children will learn curriculum through hands-on experiences utilizing active learning techniques where pupil's interests and innate curiosity are stimulated.

Whole Child: Educators will concentrate on the emotional, social, physical and moral development for the children of CVIS. Teaching techniques and individualized lessons will focus on children's personal talents. CVIS will inspire healthy, happy and well-adjusted life-long learners.

Green Curriculum

Classes will bring environmental themes and concepts to all aspects of the curriculum.

Students will learn sustainability and embrace responsibility. Math will be learned from measuring sprouts in the school garden, analyzing weather patterns, and counting the number of trees saved from reusing and recycling paper. Language will be learned within text, stories, and conversations about the global crisis of a dependency on fossil fuels and the necessity to protect the world’s ecosystems from development. Art, music, dance, physical education, and history will all be taught within the background context of the undeniable necessity to acknowledge our union with our environment. Incorporating the environment, children will learn all the requirements of their grade level curriculum.

CVIS is in the process of acquiring Mexican school accreditation with Secretaría de Educación Pública (SEP). In addition to the standard grade level curriculum in language arts, mathematics, science, social studies and health/physical education, CVIS will focus on the following areas:

1. Ecology: Students will learn about the delicate balance of nature, the interconnectedness of all things, and the necessity to reduce, reuse and recycle in order to create a sustainable environment.

2. Languages: There will be a strong curricular emphasize on multilingual conversation and learning. This will be achieved by teaching the school's programs of study in both English and Spanish, as well as allowing special learning time for achieving fluency in each student's second language.
Re-use recycling art project

3. Multiculturalism: Cultural and linguistic diversity will be promoted as an enriching and positive feature of modern society and respect, empathy tolerance and appreciation of diversity will be encouraged.

4. Technology: The academic program of CVIS will guide student preparation for 21st century life styles, including high level use of technology as an everyday tool. Videoconferences will bring the far reaches of the globe into student reality.

5. Creative Arts: The school will offer a rich program of art, music, dance and drama.

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See more details on www.colegiocostaverde.com