Getting off to a good start...

School started for us on a Thursday, February 11th. The first two days of school were orientation half days. Alejandro (my cooperating teacher) and I spent that Thursday and Friday with our fifth grade homeroom only. I felt that this would be a good opportunity to try some getting-to-know-you activities. We played a couple of silly name games and team building games, voted on classroom rules and illustrated them on posters that we hung in the room, and designed gingerbread figures to look like each of us. On the gingerbread figures I instructed students to draw three things that they like to do, and when they had finished we went around the room and shared our names and the three things we like to do. This was difficult for the students who hadn’t been practicing English over the break. I started them out with, “My name is Melissa and I like to go fishing, listen to music and be outdoors.” We helped each other as we went around the room. This was good practice for students in a nonthreatening environment and they also got to know a little about each other in the process. The gingerbread figures were hung in the room for students to revisit later and become more acquainted with one another.




Another activity we did during those two days was to label different things around the room like; door, window, whiteboard, eraser, marker, chair, desk, etc. We left the labels up so that students could reference them later. One more activity I conducted during the first couple days was a Hopes and Dreams Activity. If you’re familiar with Responsive Classroom, then you know that a Hopes and Dreams Activity is an activity in which students set goals for themselves for the school year. Some examples of the Hopes and Dreams my students set were, “To pass fifth grade,” “To learn more about math,” “To become a better soccer player,” and “To make more friends.” Students used a template of a rainbow which they colored, glued Froot Loops Cereal onto, and then wrote their Hopes and Dreams in the Pot of Gold at the rainbow’s end. Of course, the students were very excited to eat their left over Froot Loops when they had finished their projects!

I also had the fifth grade students practice procedures during the first couple days such as, morning activities, the “Give me five” attention getter, and a job chart. Alejandro helped me to explain the processes of these procedures and why they were important, and we practiced them as a class a few times through. The students were very responsive to all of the procedures, especially, “Give me five.” We’re into our third week of school now and the students are still doing really well with the procedures we put in place that first week. The Morning Activity in the photo was one I used after we had labeled items in the classroom and before a science lesson on classification.


The following Monday and Tuesday we had orientation half days with our sixth grade class, and we did many of the same activities with them. We then started the regular curriculum. Our school, like many of the schools in Costa Rica, uses curriculum from the United States. It’s nice because I understand how to use it and am familiar with it, but unfortunately it doesn’t appeal to the students much - as they are not familiar with many of the themes or topics. Many of the stories refer to states in the U.S. that the students have never heard of and don’t even recognize as the name of a place.

Like many of the schools in the United States, the teachers in our school are required to follow the curriculum. It’s been a challenge already and as I’m gradually taking over I am supplementing more and more with activities I’m finding online or making up on my own. The students are very responsive to the activities that I plan, and grateful for the opportunity to try new things. A couple of the teachers at this school have told me that they like the curriculum because it tells them exactly what to say and do. As a product of my professors, I know that this is not always the best instruction, as you need to account for; differences in student abilities, the relativity of the context, etc. Besides these important factors, classroom text books are generally written at reading levels above the grade they are intended for. For English Language Learners (ELL’s) this makes quite a difference. It’s been frustrating trying to explain certain things. For example, last week our sixth graders had a reading on the Fibonacci sequence in their reading class. The reading was very dense and difficult to comprehend, but without access to supplies or computers in the classroom, it was nearly impossible to explain!

I’m also responsible for teaching an Oral English class to the fifth and sixth grade classes on my own. This has been going alright so far, as we’ve just been getting acquainted and practicing greetings, but I feel that the addition of this class is a huge responsibility! The students in my classes struggle with their English frequently and I want them to be successful in all of their subjects. I’m working on basics for now, and I see grand possibility in sight, but it’s definitely a stressful task.

This entry was to bring my blog up to speed. I’m currently in the third week and it has been going very well - I will write more about that later! Thanks for reading!

The first weekend excursion...

I traveled to Costa Rica to complete my student teaching with a classmate from Winona State, Lisa. Lisa and I hit the ground running and started visiting the sights as soon as we could. Our house mother had arranged for us meet another traveler on Friday who is also in the Global Student Teaching program and teaching in Tres Rios. Elizabeth is originally from Washington State, and is currently living just across town from Lisa and I. On our first Saturday abroad Lisa and I got up early in the morning to meet Elizabeth at the pool.



After visiting the pool, Emilia wanted Lisa and I to have help getting to the bank – we hadn’t changed over our dollars to colones yet - so she had her eldest daughter, Aksana pick us up from the pool and take us to the local mall. The house family that Lisa and I were lucky enough to be placed with has been very welcoming and successful in making us feel right at home. Besides Aksana, Emilia has two other daughters, Larissa and Linsy and her youngest is a son named Eric. They all live at home with Emilia and are a very close, adorable family that spends much of their time together. Of all of the daughters, Lisa and I had been most intimidated by Aksana. During our outing, I complimented Aksana on her English and she was very surprised. She told us that she doesn’t like to try to use it because it’s embarrassing for her, and we told her that we don’t like to try to use our Spanish because it’s embarrassing for us. The reason we had been intimidated by her was because we thought she didn’t want to speak to us, when really she had been afraid. This is a photo of the indoor/outdoor eating area at our local mall, Terra Mall.



After the mall, Lisa and I walked down to “el centro” of town and met Elizabeth again at, “el marcado”. The market we have in Tres Rios is only a small farmer’s market but still impressive to the three of us as the sizes and colors of the fruits and vegetables here puts our local farmer’s market to shame.





Sunday, Lisa and I were invited by Emilia and Aksana to travel to the next town, Irazu and see the volcano there and then go to a fiesta. The volcano is very beautiful but windy and cold due to the elevation. There are two craters at the top and the water inside them is green because of the sulfur content.







On our way up the mountain to see the volcano, Lisa and I had been practicing our Spanish. We pulled off to the side of the road at one point, Aksana was driving and Emilia was in the passenger seat, and two men were walking down a driveway from a farm w/ a sign that said, “Zorro’s”. Since Lisa had her Spanish/English dictionary handy, I told her to quickly look up the word. We were a little frightened when we read that it could either mean, “Foxes” or, “Prostitutes.” The men, Aksana, and Emilia were yelling things back and forth for a couple minutes until they broke into laughter. Lisa and I were absolutely bewildered. Personally, I had been wondering if we were at a fox farm or a brothel! Aksana told us that these were her friends and that this was where we would be attending the fiesta. The group had been friends for about fifteen years and called themselves, the foxes. It was a funny and memorable experience as well as a lesson in what a difference it makes to understand a language correctly!

The fiesta was a great experience as well. There were about two dozen people packed into a house with lots to eat – the food just kept on coming – and adults sat around and laughed and reminisced as the children ran around the farm and played. The farm was a calla lily farm and I was able to take a lot of beautiful photos.





During our time there, Lisa and I were invited to take a walk around the property and as we rounded a corner we passed a woman who tried to tell us something in Spanish. Lisa and I just smiled and nodded and kept right on walking until we turned the corner and bumped into this adorable cow!



On the way down the mountain after the fiesta, we pulled off to the side of the rode to take a couple more photos…




…and so concludes my first weekend in Costa Rica!

... And the fun begins!

I chose to do my student teaching in Costa Rica, rather than in Minnesota, for many reasons. One of them being the obvious – it’s a beautiful foreign country with many natural recreational and visual attractions. Further, the rich cultural experience it offers. But ultimately, I wanted to put myself in the position of my future students and become an authentic learner myself. I’ve always wanted to study another language and become bilingual, and I’ve always believed that people different from yourself can teach you more than any book or school ever can. To quote the tour guide I had at Manuel Antonio National Park, “Everyone is a teacher, every place is a school.”

So I prepared myself as best as I knew how for this endeavor and arrived in Costa Rica late in the evening on February 4, 2010. I was picked up at the San Jose airport by my house mother, Emilia, and rode in a taxi for a half hour to Tres Rios. The ride seemed much longer then than it does now! I’ll be spending the next four months here in Tres Rios, and teaching in a bilingual school for 15 weeks.

I was told prior to my departure that I would be teaching in a fourth grade class. Emilia walked me to visit my school early on Friday, February 5th and I learned that I would be teaching both fifth and sixth grade, much different than I had anticipated and planned for! The cooperating teacher that I am working with is named, Alejandro, and he is one of the few members of the faculty who speak English. Together, we are responsible for teaching a fifth and a sixth grade class, we spend half the day with each, and we teach them Language, Spelling, Reading, Science and Math in English. The students go to the same subjects the other half of the day with their Spanish teacher.

The following Monday, I attended a faculty meeting at my school at 7a.m. I was late for the meeting because my house mother, Emilia, insisted that everything was fine, that we needed to eat breakfast, and she wanted to show me how to ride the bus to my school. Needless to say I was freaking out! This was the school’s first impression of me and I was going to be late! Ticos (Costa Ricans call themselves) run on Costa Rican time! I was about fifteen minutes late but the meeting hadn’t started yet. I arrived just in time to have to stand and introduce myself, in Spanish. Very embarrassing! The meeting lasted about four hours and was entirely in Spanish. I felt like I was invisible. No one makes eye contact with you as they’re talking when they know you have no idea what they’re saying. I tried, during the break, to tell Alejandro (my cooperating teacher) what I thought they had been discussing. I was completely wrong. I had thought that they were discussing motivation and self-esteem, when actually they had been talking about discipline and maintaining students’ attention. I was exhausted from straining to comprehend the presenters’ words, hand gestures, and facial expressions. All of the staff was very welcoming and happy to have me there, but it was very frustrating to not be able to get to know them the way they were getting to know each other, or to be able to contribute my ideas on the discussion topics.

The next two days I went to the school early to help Alejandro prepare our fifth grade homeroom. Our school’s first day was on Thursday, February 11th which is actually during the summer in Costa Rica. It was exciting to be able to help set up the classroom, arrange the seating chart and discuss what procedures we were going to put into action. I took a few pictures of my school and my classroom during this time.



View from my fifth grade classroom out into the mountain. Beautiful and refreshing!

View from outside my fifth grade classroom down to the left, where all the little girls play during break.

View from outside my fifth grade classroom down to the right, where all the little boys - and one brave little girl - play, they loooove futbol! This soccer field was donated to the school and is new this year.

My fifth grade homeroom ready for the first day of school...




Much more to come, as we've been in school two weeks now, thanks so much for reading!