Pura Vida

There's a lot to update as I haven't had very reliable internet access for the last few days.  Interestingly, I had better, more consistent internet in rural Guanacaste than I did here en la ciudad de San Jose.  When I left you last, we had just arrived in San Jose after our first day of school visits.  Now, I am in the airport waiting to board my flight back to the States.  One of our fellow travelers got sick upon our arrival to San Jose.  She had a very severe infection and ended up staying in the hospital until yesterday afternoon. Though she missed many experiences, I am happy to report she is doing much better and had a great experience with the Costa Rican medical system.

Our first full day in San Jose was spent at two schools, one for students with disabilities and a vocational school.  The school for estudiantes especiales se llama San Felipe Neri was one of only a handful of specialized school for students with more severe disabilities in Costa Rica.  I sat in on a class of four students who were 12-13, two with autism and two with microcephaly.  They were mostly nonverbal, and their day began with a dance to encourage body-part vocabulary.  I noticed a document with learning objectives that specified exactly the learning target they were addressing!  After a lesson in vowel sounds, we headed to educacion fisica.  There were relay races, trampoline time, and even basketball.  The teachers were enthusiastic, engaged, and showed how much they loved their students and their work.  Recent laws in Costa Rica mandate serving the needs of students with disabilities much like the legislation here in the States, and as often as possible students are served by inclusion in the regular classroom.

Our next school was Colegio Vocacional Monsenor Sanabria, a public school where students must apply to enroll.  With nearly 2000 applicants each year, only 350 are admitted, creating a student population that is very motivated and high achieving.  We were led around by a group of girls who tried as hard to practice their English as I tried to practice my Spanish.  They were very proud of their school and knew that graduating from there would enable them to more easily get a job because of the great reputation of the program.  There were students studying for many vocations such as secretaries, electricians, auto mechanics, computer networking, precision mechanics, accounting, and more.  The vocational programs are aligned with the current president's vision for education, and it was clear this program is effective and a source of pride for both the students and teachers.  That night we ate a small dinner of random pastries from the grocery store by our apartotel.

On Wednesday, we spent the whole day at St. Michael School, a private school that has been in operation since 1976.  It is a bilingual school of 1200 students from preschool to high school.  The preschool is a Montessori preschool, as are many of the Costa Rican preschools (well, private schools anyway).  It was neat to see Montessori elements in these classrooms, and I wondered why they don't continue the Montessori philosophy into higher grades.  I then got to sit in on two full math courses, one in 11th grade and one in 8th grade.  The 11th grade math was a geometry lesson on circles, and I enjoyed learning new vocabulary like "cuerda."   The lesson was traditional and teacher directed, simply working problems on the board as students followed along.  The 8th grade lesson was on factoring quadratic trinomials (which I had also seenin 9th grade at La Paz in Guanacaste).  Though a lecture, this teacher employed many of the questioning strategies I use, and was definitely aiming for conceptual understanding rather than skill practice.  I mostly understood what was going on, but as both classes were in Spanish, I definitely got the experience that many of our English language learners have daily in our schools. 

After St. Michael School, we went to Sylvia's house to meet her family and a group of retired teachers. It was amazing to see the enthusiasm and love of the profession in this other generation reflecting the same in us.  Sylvia's family was so hospitable to us, and I was so moved by all the experience and joy for teaching that was concentrated in this one place!  That night, we were able to have some free time to enjoy with the group in our casita.  We all sat around the living room playing games and being silly and getting to know each other even better.  It's clear to me that these people will be friends going forward, and I might just trek to Elon to see them graduate in a couple months!

Thursday morning we decided to operate on Tico time, as our scheduled 10 am departure became 11 am after we cooked a big breakfast and ate all together.  We visited an artisans' market in San Jose, and spent lots of money of jewelry and other gifts for ourselves and those we love.  We spent so much time in the market that we didn't have anytime for lunch!

Following the market was our visit to Ministerio de Educacion Publica (MEP).  There we heard a presentation about the history and structures of Costa Rican public education.  As with many of the school experiences, I again observed how many similarities there are to our own system.  Their system of 3735 schools is supported by a National Development Plan that is revised every four years, coinciding with the election of the president and subsequent appointment of a new education minister. In the upcoming year, there will be reforms to the math curriculum much like we're experiencing in the States with a shift to problem solving and relevant applications of mathematics.  There is a similar culture of not liking math, and one goal of the reform is to instill this math love in more students. 

Our final experience was a dinner at Ram Luna.  This restaurant ws perched atop a mountain with a view of the sprawling valley of San Jose.  Not only were we able to indulge in an all-you-can-eat/drink buffet of comida tipica, but we also were treated to a show of Costa Rican music, dance, and costumes.  The evening closed with fireworks, and then we headed back down the mountain for our last night in Costa Rica.  This has been an amazing trip to a beautiful country, and I have learned so much!! 

From vacation to education

It's late Monday night in San Jose, and I'm typing this despite not being able to access the wi-fi in our apartotel.  What's an apartotel you ask? Well, it's a cross between an apartment and a hotel!  In actuality, it's a collection of little houses walled in on the same property.  We have three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a living room, dining room, kitchen, outdoor laundry, and a garage for five of us.  The other four girls have a similar setup.  I haven't seen the boys' or the professors' digs yet, but I'm sure they're awesome too.  We will be here for the remainder of the trip, so it's nice to have a "home" to settle into.  Anyway, just know that it's Monday night despite when you might be reading this.

Sunday was our beach day.  We drove from Playa Grande to Playa Danta in the community of Las Catalinas.  All of the beaches in Costa Rica are public beaches, though many developers buy up beachfront land and deny access to locals.  Las Catalinas is different. They maintain the beach community in a sustainable way, minimizing their footprint and allowing public access for free.  At Playa Danta, we enjoyed a relaxing, fun day.  We swam in the ocean, walked on the beach, collected hermit crabs with Daniella (Sylvia's daughter), and tried paddle boarding.  Paddle boarding was easier than I thought it would be, though the waves and choppy Pacific provided quite the challenging first try.  We had a delicious lunch, and I tried my first Imperial Michelada.  It's beer poured over lime and citrus juice in a salt-rimmed glass.  It was quite refreshing with my Chifrijo, a Costa Rican dish of rice, beans, pico de gallo, guacamole, and pork.  We hung around the beach a bit longer, enough time to explore the rocks and see all sorts of life in the tide pools.  We returned to Playa Grande for an AMAZING Pacific sunset (seriously, wait until you see these pictures) and dinner at our hotel, Rip Jack Inn.  Exhausted, we headed to bed to be rested for the first day of school visits in the morning.

The first school we visited was La Paz Community School.  It is a private school that was started by 6 American expats who had a vision of how to fill a need in Guanacaste.  If there are any Lakewood people reading this, you all would have LOVED this place!  As Brian, one of the founders/administrators was giving us the overview of the school, I finally had to ask, "Do you have a background in Montessori!?"  Though he didn't, so many aspects of the school aligned with the goals and visions of the school where I currently work.  The students partake in morning meetings, the curriculum is tied to themes, students engage in project-based learning, and community building is a high priority.  They value peace and "are built on the pillars of self, family, community, and world."  I know my Montessori training isn't officially until next week, but I'm sure this place had Montessori written all over it.  Except that it didn't. I got to sit in on a 9th grade math class taught in English, though some classes are taught in Spanish in this dual-language immersion program.  They were factoring quadratics, and it was awesome to see that kids are kids and math is math in this vastly different, yet not-so-different setting. 

Next, we headed back to Playa Grande and visited a one-room school where the principal is also the teacher.  Yes, THE teacher for grades 1-6.  There is also a kindergarten teacher for half the day, a special education teacher that comes once a week, and two English teachers that rotate around schools in the region.  The teacher is able to manage the school's 23 students in small grade-level groups by connecting the varying curriculum to a central theme.  The Ministry of Education also convenes multi-grade teachers like her weekly for training and professional development.  Additionally, there is a parent-run board of directors that fundraises and otherwise supports the needs of the school.

After having seen such starkly different schools, we needed to process.  La Paz has resources, small classes, invested students, supportive parents, lots of space, and many teachers.  Escuela de Playa Grande has no resources, TINY "classes", invested students, supportive parents, little space, and few teachers.  We discussed our observations over a final lunch at Rip Jack, and then loaded onto the bus for a long haul back to San Jose.  There was sleeping, laughing, picture-taking, and talking on the 5 hour ride.  Upon arriving to the apartotel, we group-grocery shopped for breakfast food and then ventured out for dinner.  

We are visiting more schools and the Ministry of Education the rest of this week, and I can't wait to keep learning about education here.  As is expected, there are many differences on the surface.  However, as we begin to dig deeper, I think we will find that there are more similarities than we expected.