Costa Rican vs United States Schools

Thus far we have seen 2 schools, these schools were very different to the school in to United States however the students were very similar. Our first school Calle Herandez had multiple classrooms, including a English room, Special Education room and they were building another room so the English teacher wouldn’t have to share the room she was currently in. The second school in San Luis was much smaller, one large room divided into two groups, one group for 1-3^rd grade and another for 4-6^th grade. There was a small kindergarten room off to the side. Both schools had a principal office, area for the student to play outside and cafeteria. I noticed when the children were playing there was essentially zero supervision. This blew my mind because in the United State that would never happen. The San Luis school had been approved to be apart of a government program that gave them a set of small DELL laptops and a projector with internet access. This blew my mind, I was so happy to see that the 20 or so students in this very rural area were being given technology to utilized in the classroom. At Calle Hernandez school had one-classroom computers but they also had CD’s that were used to listen to the ABC’s in English and sing along with. It is typical for in the US classroom that I have seen to have computers or laptops and SMARTboards or CD’s/movies.

Even with the different environment and resources/supplies the student were essentially the same. Through our time there we learned that keeping the students, especially the younger ones moving, is a good thing. Giving clear directions and review the topic before moving on is necessary for Costa Rican schools and US schools. The student also respond better when you get to know them and they feel more comfortable talking with you, I’ve noticed that if I tell or show the student (or adults) that I’m working on Spanish but struggling or asking questions they are more willing to try to speak English around me because we can relate in that manner.

Today we added a third type of school in the mix, we visited a private school that was in the cloud forest and served grades prek-11^th. I absolutely loved this place. Some of the differences that were very obvious were that they had HUGE motivations to recycle and promote sustainability. The US tries to promote recycling of paper, which is good but this just proved that so much more is possible. They had organic places that they used the food scraps in the garden, plastic, and paper. This school also had two greenhouses with a third on the way so they promote reforestation. I’ve seen some schools with gardens but I thought this was just so awesome. Another large difference was class size, here each class had 12-17 students and anything over 18 and the class gets a volunteer. Those students who needed financial assistance can earn scholarships however that requires them to do about 72 volunteer hours.  Throughout all of our schools one thing was clear the students learn the same. They all have different needs even within one room, every student has a preferred learning style and building relationships and connections with them is a necessity.

            Teaching has been different, for myself at least. I have this habit of comparing every situation I’m in to my previous kindergartners and second graders. Here in Costa Rica those experiences only go so far. There was minimal classroom strategies used in some of the schools, the students would listen to their teacher but they just wanted to play with us. I didn’t see any clip charts, goals listed, class points or anything that would seem normal in the States. The private school was by far the closest to the Unites States schools because they had so many American teachers and ideas.