During this whole trip, I have had my eyes opened to the struggles of learning another language. When I am in Spanish class, the professor does not speak in English at all. We are not even allowed to speak to classmates in English without getting in trouble. It has been hard to stay focused the entire four-hour session, even with the short break in the middle.
We visited the Cloud Forest private school in Monteverde this morning. While there, we got a tour of the school and met with several of the teachers to learn more about how they teach. One of the most important things I heard them talking about in terms of language is the way they integrate English into their program. Currently, all the core classes in Elementary are taught to the students in English, with a short amount of time each day for Spanish class. This is because of numerous reasons, but two of them are that (1) many of the teachers at the school are from the United States and (2) the school and classes are more rigorous than comparable public schools. One of the administrators we spoke with mentioned that next year they will be switching to a new schedule wherein they will teach half the day in English and half the day in Spanish. In this way, students will be able to learn content in their native language. From what I have learned in Spanish class already, this is the most important thing the school can do for its students. I get frustrated very easily in class, especially when learning grammatical information, because I don't understand many of the critical things like definitions of vocabulary and instructions from the teacher. I feel it would be near impossible for me to learn any content information in this setting at this point in my Spanish development.
Another important thing I learned at the Cloud Forest School is its similarity to U.S. schools in terms of the role of teacher. Just like in the states, a teacher spoke to me about her responsibilities to teach students more skills than knowledge and things beyond academics. She told me about how they use the outdoors to apply information and how they create project-based learning units as often as possible. From the things I heard, it sounds like they teach exactly how I should be teaching. It's about kids and helping them become successful adults more than it's about passing assessments.