Next week is our last full week! I can´t believe we have been here for over a month already. I have learned so much about the daily life both in and around San Ambrosia school. I have finally begun to recognize and evaluate some of the differences between Costa Rican Schools as compared to schools in the United States.
It seems that here in Nicoya they let fewer obstacles stand in the way of teaching time and allow fewer things take away from that time. Students are not let out of school for heat (which, of course, is always an difficult for both teachers and students) or because of power outages (which is not uncommon and is a big deal because there are then no fans to combat the heat).
Teachers in Nicoya devote more time to the classroom and specifically to learning time and less time to classroom management and organization, reward or discipline systems. The students are given much more freedom, even at a very young age. They do not go walk in lines around school to lunch or to the bathrooms and no one holds their hands as they leave school at the end of the day. One of our first grade students rides his bike to school alone every morning. This is something that would be a rare sight in our communities, as parents are quite a bit more protective of their children.
Students are also given more freedom within the classroom and, therefore, do not usually follow typical rules of the United States like raising your hand before you talk. When we tried to explain this concept to our students, they thought that once they raised their hands they were immediately allowed to talk. This has helped me recognize that when students from other countries come into my classroom in the future I need to be understanding. Behaviors which I perceive as disobedience may actually be behaviors that were reinforced or simply not reprimanded in other communities or cultures because the behaviors we expect are not valued in others places like they are in the United States.
It has also been interesting for me to note that most of the teachers at San Ambrosia have higher expectations of their students and provide more harsh critiques of their students than in the United States, where parents would likely complain about the teacher´s lack of sensitivity towards students. Students seem to take it all in stride, and I believe it is just a different system, in which the students need high expectations in order to succeed.
From a general classroom teacher´s perspective it is also interesting to me that the grade teachers (first, second, third, etc) do not play a role in literally leading students throughout the day. If their students are in PE, English, or Music for their first class, the teacher does not need to show up before those classes in order to organize the students or take attendance. There is no ¨homeroom¨ period during the day. Or if these classes are the last of the day, the classroom teacher may leave school early, she does not have to wait until the end of the day and send her students off.
More than anything else, I believe the observation of these differences will assist me in having a deeper understanding of students from other cultures and their motivations for behaviors which I may not have otherwise understood.
This is William. He is in first grade and he rides his bike to school everyday.
These are the first grade girls!