This week the girls and I were fully emersed in the classroom. Starting bright and early Monday morning we all rolled into school ready for a fresh start to our week teaching.
San Ambrosio is an open air school with an outdoor Soda (Cafeteria). The Soda is the center of activity for the school because of its great food and shelter from the incredibly hot sun. When students are on break, they run straight to the Soda to buy empañanas, Coca-colas or candy.
The Soda is also the place where Kirbi, Sarah, Mel, Ashley and I usually start our day. We meet up at the Soda, discuss what we are doing in our classes that day, and then everyone breaks to the classes they will be teaching.
This week I was immersed in my 7th, 10th, and 11th grade classrooms. The 7th grade is very motivated and enjoys talking in English as much as they can. At times my 10th and 11th grade classes are motivated, but for the most part they do not want to speak. Speaking English is often times intimidating for my stuents, but they need to speak to get comfortable with the language. My goal in 10th and 11th grade is to motivate my students to speak English in class!
This week the other girls and I had the opportunity to visit another Private Catholic School in Cañas. Cañas is a friendly, small town about an hour and a half north of Nicoya. The school we visited was amazing! They had a well developed English program with teachers who understood pedagogy. They also had students placed in English classes based on ability rather than grade level. Having ability groups requires more staffing but really makes a difference when it comes to comprhension for students. The model of this school was very nice and in the future the school has a desire to recieve student teachers from Appalachoan State too.
The week was very eye opening and the schedule for next week looks just as interesting.