Place as Classroom
There’s a moment on the way to Reserva Playa Tortuga when students realize this isn’t a normal field trip. They’re not there to look at exhibits. They’re there to do the actual work, helping monitor a local bat population, the same kind of data collection that real conservation depends on.
It’s one of our favorite examples of place as the classroom, and it teaches science in a way no lab worksheet ever could.
Science Is a Verb
Most kids meet science as a noun, a body of facts to memorize and repeat on a test. At Playa Tortuga, they meet it as a verb. They observe. They count. They record carefully, because sloppy data is useless data. They learn that a single observation means little but patterns over time mean everything.
That’s the actual scientific method, lived rather than recited. And it sticks, because the kids weren’t proving an answer the teacher already knew. They were gathering information nobody had until they collected it.
Why Bats, of All Things
Bats are easy to fear and easy to misunderstand, which makes them a perfect teacher. Students learn that these animals are pollinators and pest controllers, quietly essential to the ecosystem right outside our door. A creature a child once found creepy becomes a creature they want to protect.
That shift, from fear to fascination to stewardship, is exactly the kind of curiosity our four values ask for. Stay Curious isn’t a poster at Playa Tortuga. It’s the whole point of the day.
Rooted in a Real Place
This trip also does the quieter work we care about most. It roots our students in their own backyard. The reserve isn’t a faraway destination. It’s part of the Costa Ballena community they live in. When kids contribute real data to a real local effort, they stop being visitors to nature and start being caretakers of it.
For our older students, this connects to a bigger arc, the multi-day expeditions and project-based learning that define our secondary years. The bat count is often where it begins, the first time a child senses that their work can matter beyond a grade.
What They Bring Home
The data goes into the monitoring records. But the real takeaway rides home with the kids. Science isn’t something other people do in distant laboratories. It’s something a curious person can do this afternoon, with careful eyes and an honest count, in a forest near the beach where they live. That lesson outlasts any exam, and it starts with a child counting bats in the dark.
