“The use of traveling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.” – Samuel Johnson

Monday:
Another Monday in Spanish class at CPI means another teacher with a new accent and teaching style. This week, my small beginner level Spanish group, has a male teacher who has been with CPI since the original foundation in 1992. His style is challenging, yet friendly and strictly Spanish. He understands English relatively well, but simply chooses not to say any to his students. When we asks “Que es….?”, he replies with some sort of verbal description accompanied with charades of the word. Depending on the word, it may take us anywhere from 5 seconds to 5 minutes to guess the vocabulary. Needless to say, I enjoy this style the best. Although it is more challenging than before, I feel like I am constantly thinking, challenging myself to answer/converse in complete Spanish sentences, but most of all it has lead me to be more confident in my Spanish speaking skills. The more I know, the more I use at home. And the more I use at home, the more fluent I become.

My familia tica is ever patient with my Spanish skills. They have housed students before so they understand and it helps that my tica Hermana (sister) speaks relatively perfect English. I am certainly learning just as much from the teachers at CPI and my familia tica as I am from my tica Hermana and hermano. My daily routine at home has been narrowed down to every step basically: come home, 1.5 hrs of Zumba with mama tica and Hermana tica, shower (el dulche), homework (tarea) while watching Combate (a muy popular programme de television en Costa Rica) and then to bed by 9 pm (dormire). Costa Rica is an early to bed, early to rise society and as such has rubbed off on me. Maybe this “early to rise” ideal rubs off for my 8 am summer classes that start next week. 

More on my familia tica: My hermano tico is a 3^rd grader at the local St. Elena primary school. Every night, he finds some part of his homework (a new subject every night) to ask me a question about. Sunday though was the most fun. Like many 3^rd graders in the States, Juan (hermano tico) is learning how to write cursive. Sitting at the kitchen table with a pile of notebook paper and a pencil (lapiz), Juan and I practiced upper and lower case letters in cursive for almost forty minutes. When he eventually understood how to write individual letters, I wrote down words in print and then he would write them in cursive. Some words in English, some in Spanish, we started with the basics and some vocabulary he was learning in math and science. After about a ½ hour of writing words in cursive, Juan’s attention span ran out on everything and decided that my name was the easiest word to write in cursive due to the repeated e’s and a l. He decided that writing my name on my notebook, my tarea and my dicionario was essential to his learning. I can’t lose them now! Ironically, I still remember from 3^rd grade loving to write my name in cursive because it was so easy.

Time with Juan like this makes me hopeful for my future student teaching classroom in 3^rd grade. I want to bring some of the lessons I learned with Juan to Jones Elementary. I want the Global Scholars there to know just how similar the curriculum and lesson plans are for 3^rd graders in other countries. I want to bring the world into my classroom by bringing all my students together to create a global network focused on citizenship, collaboration and thematic based learning.

Tuesday:

To continue on the theme of thematic based learning, el grupo made a visit to the Monteverde Cloud Forest School. The school is considered a private school here in Monteverde, similar to the concept of a charter school in the states. Started by locals and internationals who wanted a school in Monteverde focused on environmental education and farming. In their 20^th anniversary, Monteverde Cloud Forest School continues to collaborate with the Costa Rica Nature Conservancy, the local St. Elena community and expand in academic curriculum each and every year. The school is comprised of mostly locals combined with some international students ranging from Pre-Kindergarten to 11^th grade. In the Pre-K-6^th grade, students are taught ½ in English and ½ in Spanish as opposed to the upper school starting in 7^th grade when students are taught completely in English.

Every grade is capped at about 19, but some have as small as 12. Teachers, wherever they come from, are told to teach in their native language if they teach an elective course. However, if they teach a core course, it depends on the grade. The school, because it is private, has used the national curriculum standards as the foundation for the teachers, but also uses the consistent donations of people from all over the world to help their students in every subject and every grade. For example, the lower grades now use the system of Wordly Wise (that is sometimes used in the public schools in the States) introduced by an American teacher who taught there for a few years and has now moved on elsewhere.

The school, as a whole, was founded on the ideals of environmental education and farming and has thus those essential principles for the last 20 years. I was very impressed with not only their flexibility in teacher choice (within the curriculum), but also with the students who have learned to be a part of an international thematic community where they truly grow up to global citizens.

To top the day off, a visit to the Chocolate Restaurant (which I promise serves real food) with some of the group is truly the perfect meal I needed to wake me up for Spanish class. Thus far, just in two weeks, I have learned more than I could have ever imagined. I keep trying to practice my Spanish more and more and constantly thinking about how to keep it going back in Asheville. I feel myself gradually delving into the Intermediate Fluency level, but I still have a lot of work to do.  The more time I spend with the students here and the local community, the more I want to be fluent and be able to communicate with all of my current and future students. 

Wednesday:

A visit to the Life Monteverde farm kept the todo el grupo in check with a morning of farming, planting vegetables and fertilizing coffee. More specifically though, Mrs. Bramley and I went one direction with a family friend of the farm owners to go plant some corn (maize) and green beans (?) using the chicken feet gardening philosophy with a native Costa Rican, Juan. During our farming time, Mrs. Bramley and I asked him questions not only about his family and heritage, but also his English level. Juan takes English classes at CPI, but also has learned a little bit teaching past students how to farm on an organic plantation. I would say he was at the Intermediate Fluency level because he could hold a conversation in English with us, but stumbled on a few words here and there. 


During our conversations though, I functioned as the translator for a few words. For example, cabra is goat, but both Juan and us had trouble saying the word in the opposite language. By the end of the time though, we figured it out and could remember it! The people were friendly, open and well versed in organic farming. They started Life Monteverde, the farm, about 10 years ago with the idea of organic farming and sustainable community living. The idea has flourished since then and has acted as a stepping stone for more sustainable movements around Costa Rica. As Guillermo's t-shirt said, MonteVERDE (Go Green!).