Building Casa Morpho: An Education Initiative

Hi, my name is Rozanne Dioso-Lopez and together with my friend and business partner, Nina Neidhart, we are raising funds to build an education center in the middle of the jungle in Costa Rica. Casa Morpho currently owns 1.5 hectares of land.

My background in education began with homeschooling my five children for over a decade. Through Casa Morpho, I have co-written and published chapters with Minkie English (independent researcher) on education in three academic texts including two chapters on the high school classes I have guided under the Community of Learners (CoL) framework.

We are in the process of facilitating Non-Violent Communication (NVC) with all of our guides and students. Nina is currently attending programs and courses about NVC to develop a curriculum for Casa Morpho. We want to make NVC the language of Casa Morpho to support our students and guides in their personal growth.

For the last four years, I have been the academic director of Casa Morpho and the main high school program leader. We started with six high school students and now have expanded to almost 70 students ages 6-17. It has been the greatest joy and purpose of my life to go to work every day and work with these children and teens along with my wonderfully talented colleagues.

In the beginning, I dedicated my time and effort to Casa Morpho as a family passion project - with my children and for my children. Today I continue to commit to this education alternative because I have seen the benefits of guiding children with the world's very best teacher - Mother Nature herself. Nina and I hope to invite more students and teachers around the world to come and observe how learning without four walls changes the very nature of the Learner.

Our philosophy is centered around physical literacy and social-emotional learning through the main principles of curiosity and connection - connection to our mind and bodies, to each other, to the community, and to nature.

We previously rented a space where the classrooms were all outdoors and where the children had plenty of movement throughout the day. We would like to build in a way that works with nature that is open to the outdoors with minimal footprint on this land where the children can feel expansive in a space that encourages movement.

We maintain small class sizes (8-10) because children learn best in smaller groups using any pedagogical tool or framework.

We use the Earth Charter and its pillars as a guide to our curriculum and have incorporated Howard Gardner's Theory of Multiple Intelligences and will implement Project-Based Learning as a framework for teaching this upcoming academic year as we have seen the students most engaged in projects that have real-world consequences that they co-design with their peers and guides. We customize the learning according to the child and their needs to develop trust so that learning can occur.

We have had two graduating classes at Casa Morpho which have included two of my children. In high school, we focus on dialogue and critical thinking as we attempt to ask deeper questions that need an integration of many disciplines to find an answer.

High school course requirements also include Global Citizenship studies which offer students a humanities perspective on the responsibilities and tasks of a citizen of the world. We offer an option for course accreditation through a US-based high school.

We will use the funds directly to build 6 classrooms with a simple wooden floor, one wall to support a chalkboard and a roof. It will cost $4000 USD per classroom for the building materials and labour.

Our other expenses include rocks for the floor in the main dining area and kitchen space. In the kitchen space, we will purchase appliances because we serve a vegetarian snack and lunch to all the staff and students. Most of the fruit and vegetables are locally sourced and we will now be able to start our garden to grow our vegetables and herbs. We plan to create a tree nursery as a way to help propagate trees and also plant fruit trees and endangered trees on our land.

We hope that this space will also be used to host community events in the future and a place for workshops held by the greater community members.

We plan to start our academic year on September 12, 2023. With a very simple design of classrooms, the initial construction phase can be done in the next two months with spaces ready to welcome the students for another year at Casa Morpho.

Each donor will receive access to a newsletter updating the progress of the build and will also receive a special gift this fall created by the students.

You can also follow our progress through our instagram account: @casa.morpho

For an understanding of my education philosophy, you can read this post and this post (or you can search for "homeschooling" on the blog).

For snippets of what happens at Casa Morpho, you can read this post, this post, this post, and this post.

For a glimpse of what we focused on when we locked down during the pandemic, read this post and on how our little initiative survived, read this post.