Wednesday morning we went on a tour of El Trapiche, a local coffee and sugar cane farm. It is a family owned farm and they do tours to keep it all running! I was really interesting to see how the coffee is grown, peeled, dried, shelled, sorted and roasted! I never thought about how difficult a process producing coffee could be! We also got to see how sugar cane is processed and turned into liquor, candy and the sugar block. We got to make some candy with chocolate, coconut, and peanuts in it! It was delicious!
Thursday morning we went on a hike through the Santa Elena Reserve with a bilingual guide. We mainly saw a bunch of different plants, insects, and heard a bunch of birds! It was a beautiful hike; the guide told us that it is the most diverse forest in the area with over 300 species of plants! I took a lot of pictures of the greenery.
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| Munchin' on some sugar cane! |
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| Group shot in front of the coffee fields! |
Friday morning we went back to the Elementary school here! It was great! We got to observe two English classes (taught to 1st and 2nd grades). The teacher was teaching the names for the members of the family. After she drew the members and had the students repeat them back to her multiple times, we got to work one on one with students pronouncing the different names and talking to them about their own families and our own. I got to work with the cutest little boy, he did a great job of drawing and pronouncing all the words, when I asked him about his family he got really excited and started telling all about his 2 older sisters and younger brother and his pet cow! He couldn't believe that I didn't have any pets!
It was interesting to me that this teacher was strictly teaching vocabulary, not connecting it for the students to have it make more sense. All she did was draw a picture of each family member and have the students repeat back the names. This made me realize that as a teacher, everything should be connected to help give students a reference point and meaning. Students should also have more role and ownership in their learning instead of strictly repetition. After two classes of essentially the same thing we went to the fourth grade class and did a letter writing lesson with small groups. Ashley and I worked together with a group of 4 girls and they did a great job! We kept going back and forth between English and Spanish and between the two of us we were on the ball! The wonderful cafeteria ladies there gave us each a plate full of fruit and then we headed back to CPI. We had some free time so I talked to my family and Lee and really realized just how much I miss home. I think we are all really frustrated and tired and tired of being out of our comfort zone. When I went to Spanish class we were covering the different forms of to be and many of us started to really shut down. There was a point where I had my head on my desk and couldn’t think about the differences anymore. That was the first time that I have really shut down, I didn’t want to think or speak in Spanish anymore…I just wanted to speak in English and move on to a different topic. This made me think back to Pine Valley (where I did my mini-internship). We had a lot of ESL students in our class and I can remember them at times getting really frustrated and putting their heads down, now I know a little bit about how they feel. Our teacher couldn't speak to us in English to help make the explanations easier and their teacher at Pine Valley couldn't speak in Spanish to help them. This makes me want to keep up some of my Spanish so that if I have students who are feeling frustrated I can speak to them some in Spanish and hopefully be able to turn them around.
It was interesting to me that this teacher was strictly teaching vocabulary, not connecting it for the students to have it make more sense. All she did was draw a picture of each family member and have the students repeat back the names. This made me realize that as a teacher, everything should be connected to help give students a reference point and meaning. Students should also have more role and ownership in their learning instead of strictly repetition. After two classes of essentially the same thing we went to the fourth grade class and did a letter writing lesson with small groups. Ashley and I worked together with a group of 4 girls and they did a great job! We kept going back and forth between English and Spanish and between the two of us we were on the ball! The wonderful cafeteria ladies there gave us each a plate full of fruit and then we headed back to CPI. We had some free time so I talked to my family and Lee and really realized just how much I miss home. I think we are all really frustrated and tired and tired of being out of our comfort zone. When I went to Spanish class we were covering the different forms of to be and many of us started to really shut down. There was a point where I had my head on my desk and couldn’t think about the differences anymore. That was the first time that I have really shut down, I didn’t want to think or speak in Spanish anymore…I just wanted to speak in English and move on to a different topic. This made me think back to Pine Valley (where I did my mini-internship). We had a lot of ESL students in our class and I can remember them at times getting really frustrated and putting their heads down, now I know a little bit about how they feel. Our teacher couldn't speak to us in English to help make the explanations easier and their teacher at Pine Valley couldn't speak in Spanish to help them. This makes me want to keep up some of my Spanish so that if I have students who are feeling frustrated I can speak to them some in Spanish and hopefully be able to turn them around.
On the way home a few of us got dropped off in town and got some ice cream and on the walk back to our houses we saw a sloth hanging in a tree right off the road eating some leaves! We got so excited! I had my small camera with me, but I took a few pictures and headed to my house and grabbed my big camera and went back! I took a few more pictures and then the sloth curled up and went to sleep. I was walking with Katie and Ashley and my papa tico stopped by and picked me up on his way home from work. My mama tica is gone for the weekend so the two of us ate pasta takeout and watched Two and a Half Men and Pursuit of Happiness in English, a pretty American Friday night!I guess this is in a way what ESL students feel like when they get home from school.
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