First week of school!

Settling into Monteverde

What an eventful week it has been for me!  On Sunday I went with some of my friends to hike through the river.  We found lots of butterflies and a handful of small waterfalls near our houses, which was fun but meant our riverwalk was shorter than anticipated.

Wednesday was our first day of school, and I was pooped at the end of the day.  I only have 12 students in my class.  11 of them have been in bilingual programmes before, and 1 child is starting her first week in a bilingual school so she has a very limited amount of English.  One of my challenges this year will be to teach her the material in a way that she isn´t loosing the math and literacy objectives but is still getting an immersion programme.  

As a whole the students seem ready for the year.  Half the students are very talkative and the other half have started out the year by showing me their shy side.  One of the students translates most of what I say, which is great that he´s learning English so well, but this could prove a huge obstacle for me because all of the other students need to learn English as well, and not to just rely on their classmate.

So far we´ve had 2 full days of classes and our half-day on Friday.  Every Friday is a half-day for the kids, but we stay til 4 o´clock for staff meetings and professional development.  Friday mornings I think will go by extra quickly because we start off the day with a “school sing” which is basically a big sing along to get the kids from pre-K to 6th grade together to sing and enjoy the school.  This is a lot of fun and the kids love it.  My mentor, Jesse (the 6th grade teacher) lead the School Sing this week and sang a song about things you appreciate and how hard it would be to imagine life without it.  When he opened it up to the students the first suggestion was “I can´t imagine life without Fishy,” which obviously made me blush because it was my 3rd day there, but I take it as a sign that I´m building a good reputation among the students already.

Another interesting thing about the school is that for PE Jesse and I are able to merge our classes and give them 2 options.  So Friday morning I took about half of the 5th and 6th graders on a hike to the top of campus.

(View of Monteverde from the Upper Kiosk on campus)

On Friday we also started our “Community Partners” project where my 5th graders will spend time mentoring the kinder kids (which are confusingly the pre-K students).  We also found a scorpion in class on Friday!

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Even though I have been exhausted from school every day and usually want to go to bed by 8pm I have been able to get out and explore Monteverde, Santa Elena and Cerro Plano (the 3 neighborhoods here) a little bit.  On Saturday I got to play Ultimate with Amy, Jesse and a few others.  Later on Saturday some of my friends hosted a party for a bunch of the teachers at the hotel they live in, and for the first time in a week we all stayed awake past 10PM!  Well, all of us except for 6 year old Logan.  

I am off to get ready for tomorrow.  PEACE and KEEP DREAMING!

PS, OH YEAH, I made brownies today, I do believe it´s the first thing I´ve ever baked.

PPS, We also went out for Pizza at this great place downtown on Friday night