Coming Home

Currently writing on the eve of Christmas Eve, from PA. I'm no longer working at CEC, and quickly moving forward with a new job to avoid feeling the full effect of the reality that I packed all of my bags (who knew you could collect so much in 18 months?) when I left Monteverde this December. It's hard to describe how I've been feeling, which explains the prolonged silence. I spent the month after being let go with applying to teaching jobs and putting off saying goodbye. I flirted with the idea of finding another teaching job on the mountain, or another something else job. I still love so much of what I found in Monteverde. The one paved road and stopping along it to chat with familiar faces. Where the paved road meets the unpaved road. The door that we seldom locked and was often pushed open with an "Upe!" or a gust of wind. Learning to dance, to cook, to live with new rhythms. The rain, feeling certain that you could touch the end of a rainbow around the corner. The wind, and how it could knock you over, lift you up. Although I don't have solid plans for my future, I know that I'll be back, that I'll change and that the mountain will change, along with the folks I know who're still there and those that will come and go without me meeting them. I'm both excited and hesitant as I move forward. Being greeted in PA with a record snow storm was a smack in the face to remind me that airplanes as well as tornadoes can take you far away from what's familiar, that "there's no place like home", but that home is more than where I drop my suitcases. I smiled on Tuesday when I went to my new school, with 1100 students, and found a teacher potluck to celebrate the upcoming vacation. Although I had to rush to finish in the 30 minute lunch period, I could already see possibilities for finding new ways to expand my "home".

My Starfish Story

On my most recent vacation, in September, I took some time to explore Santa Rosa National Park, which is in the northwest corner of the country, almost in Nicaragua. A 4am wake-up and 3 buses away from Monteverde, I was in an entirely different ecosystem, less green, more sun, and the preferred home of Costa Rica's national animal, the white tailed deer.

Bus station in Liberia

The majority of the time, I had the park’s trails entirely to myself. I saw...

...monkeys,

...cactus growing like vines,

...a completely empty beach,

...birds,

...crabs,

...interesting driftwood,

and a starfish with a pair of gimpy legs.

When I saw the starfish, I was reminded of the starfish story (click to read the story) that my West Philly roommates Alice, Dana and Maya told me when they were in City Year. It's an inspirational story about a little girl who wants to make a difference. Smiling to myself, and channeling that little-girl enthusiasm, I picked up the starfish and threw it towards the Pacific. Unfortunately, I am not a very good throw, and it landed immediately in the crashing waves. So, realizing that rather than actually helping this little guy to get back into the ocean and live a happy starfish life, I was in fact only prolonging the hour of his death by waves onto sand to dry up in the hot Guanacaste sun. Still imagining pig-tails and good intentions, I found him again in the crashing waves and picked him up to throw him to safety. As I flung him, his leg flew off, and he plopped a few feet in front of me. Not wanting to make his situation worse, and hoping that starfish can regenerate their legs, I decided to move on.

I am not sure what the moral of this story is.

Leaf-cutter ants

Here's a peek at leaf-cutter ants. Usually they carry (you guessed it) leaves that are 3-4 times their body size, but these ones are toting pink flowers. The video is actually from my friend Dana from our day-cation to Las Juntas. She could tell you lots more about these guys, since she spent two months volunteering in Monteverde telling tourists about interesting insects at the Butterfly Garden.



Perhaps the most incredible thing to notice is that these ants make a path, with their little ant legs, from so much walking back and forth.



Gorgeous.

Problem solving

I'm now a month into my second year at The Cloud Forest School, in my new role as the Colegio Academic Support Teacher, working with special ed and ESL students in 7th-11th grades. I've become super-slacker with regards to updating my blog, mostly because in the second semester, I accepted the position of Assistant Director of Academics, with a lot more responsibilities. I've since resigned from that role, wanting to focus more on supporting the progress of my students and growing as an educator without so many commitments. I also want to use this job, as well as friendships and the natural beauty of Monteverde as inspiration for more writing. Keeping this blog relatively up-to-date and picking up more on my writing are both personal goals I have for this year.

One thing I realized about myself last year is that I like identifying and solving problems. But also that I cannot solve all, or really any of them, alone. As trite as that sounds, it was a huge realization, and recognizing this and also the need to focus my energy on tackling one (maybe 3) problems at a time will allow me to be successful and happy.

This lesson, of relying on others to successfully face and meet challenges, was one that Becky and I presented to our 8th grade advisory a few weeks back at the start of the school year. We started with a team-building game where each person got a word on their back and had to find and link arms with the person who had a matching word (i.e. spoon & fork, rice & beans, shoes & socks) without talking. It's not possible to see the whole problem if half of the riddle is on your back, so this is successful when a third person comes and puts two partners together. When we talked about the activity, it was clear that some folks had "cheated" and either looked at their back or whispered to a friend what was on theirs. Diego claimed this was telepathy. Next, we did a trust walk with partners, and then "Magic Carpet", which involved 18 students standing on a VERY large beach towel that my mom left for me when she visited in February (although not super useful for real beach trips, which always involved backpacking and riding several hours in a public bus, this was ideal for team building purposes). They then had to flip it over without anyone getting off the carpet/ginourmous beach towel. This was finally successful only when a "lightning storm" gave 2 students superpowers and the ability to fly (and piggyback another 2 students), but pulling each other together into a tighter group and cooperating made the task easier. So, in our discussion at the end of advisory, we asked some questions about how they solved these problems that they were presented with and what they could take away and apply to other problems, expecting answers like teamwork, cooperation, communication, etc. But, my favorite responses were: telepathy and lightning.

Growing our library

As part of our planning for improving the English curriculum in the colegio, we are also looking at growing out the colegio English classroom library, which was largely built when the high school was still growing and classes were 4-5 students. Now classes are as large as 22. Currently, Tracy uses the available resources and runs her class as a series of reading groups. We would like to be able to read some texts as a full class, with the ability to have shared conversations. If you're able, please consider donating a book on our wish list online or giving requested titles that are collecting dust in your library to me when I return home for Christmas (in just one week!).

Why teach English?

As I'm wrapping up my first semester teaching at CEC, I am looking back at these past few months and forward into planning for next semester. Which has me revisiting the question “Why do we study English?” The first day of class, I asked every student to answer this question along with some others as part of setting goals. The seriousness of their responses was a bit surprising. Pamela, a 7th grader, wrote: “Quiero aprender inglés porque es muy importante para hoy en día. Si uno no sabe inglés, no es nadie.” Which translates: “I want to learn English because it is very important for today. If you do not know English, you are no one.”

Now I am working with our colegio English teacher Tracy to plan how to incorporate the ESL students into the colegio English classes, and also rethinking our goals, as teachers and as a school, for teaching English.

So, why DO we teach English at a school in the cloud forest of the Tiliran mountains of Costa Rica? It's clear that many students and their families choose CEC because of the opportunity to really learn English. With the year's tuition equal to a third of an average salary in the region, that choice is even more telling of the value which families place on this skill. I think it's clear that knowing English is a way of increasing job opportunities, especially in the Monteverde region where most jobs are found in tourism and biology research which require interacting with many English speakers. In fact, with the amount of English spoken in Monteverde, it can feel like a rural community in the U.S.

Beyond that, I think that knowing the English language gives students access to new ideas and perspectives, both through communication with other English speakers and through literature. The study of English expands students' world view and understanding of history and helps them to develop an appreciation for cultural differences.

Side note - the Costa Rican Ministry of Education requires that students take an English exam along with other subjects in order to graduate. This test is a 70-80 question multiple choice test with comprehension questions based on a series of short (less than 200 word) texts, such as an email to a tourist with recommendations for planning their trip to Costa Rica, or a description of an English class, or a conversation between a ticket agent and a customer buying a train ticket from NYC to DC. Although this test is not comprehensive, I think it shows a recognition of the importance of knowing a second language and a national attempt to prepare graduates to participate in a world that functions in languages other than Spanish (and often in English). I want us to go beyond the basics in what we're expecting of our students.

Working from my ideas and conversations with others, I have created an outline with ideas for developing the colegio English curriculum around 5 different themes, one for each grade: identity, voices, culture, justice and the environment. And I have ideas for titles to consider with each of the themes. I've heard folks say that anyone can teach English, especially ESL abroad, so long as they know how to speak the language. While I disagree, I do think that I can create a much stronger curriculum using contributions from others. And I think that everyone has useful ideas about interesting books and movies. I'd love to have your input. You can email me suggestions for titles or ask to look at the Google doc.

Pretzels and photos

I made pretzels with my 7^th grade ESL students the other day. Since they had never heard of them before, it was completely fine that we didn't have pretzel salt and the oven and yeast weren't really working. They had a lot of fun covering their hands with flour and twisting the dough into shape, and so long as the final result was warm fresh-baked goodness, I think everyone would have been happy.

A volunteer who is making a video about our school was one of several folks to walk in the kitchen as we were pretzeling, and she asked to take some footage, which was definitely a lot of fun. I also had my camera and had taken a few shots of dough and smiles.

Then I thought about pictures. That decision that, yes, this moment is worth capturing and sharing with others. I remembered a conversation I overheard between a student inviting a volunteer to climb a strangler fig a short walk from school, and she replied, no, I don't have my camera. Like it wasn't worth the trip if you couldn't document the experience. Which is clearly silly.

I think of all of the moments that are just as—and often more—important than students posing with pretzel dough. Like Beatriz's look of concentration as she described the super strong wind with her growing English skills, retelling how she saw a bird thrown against the 'Perro Negro' hill coming from school. And her smile when she was through and could see that I understood her meaning. Or Luis and Freddy wrestling each other to the ground to reenact a bear catching a fish in a story we read. Or Anna standing on a chair and singing 'All I Want for Christmas is You' into her hairbrush to cheer up a friend. Or one of many stray dogs that came into the bar/lounge Moon Shiva and fell asleep on Bethany's lap. Those moments I wouldn´t want to interrupt by taking out my camera or happen when I´m not carrying it, but I often wish I could blink my eyes and have them work like the shutter of a camera so that I could share the things I see with others.