This morning our group went to La Carpio, a Nicaraguan refugee camp in southern Costa Rica. When we got there, we started by participating in a service project. As you can see in the picture, the main streets run along the top of the mountain. Most of the homes have been built down the mountain, basically on top of each other. Some of the volunteers at La Carpio have worked hard to build stairs for the residents; in the past they had to basically slide down the dirt or mud hill to their home and it was near impossible to get back up the hill. Half of our group worked on painting the railing for this stairway to protect it from the weather. The other half, which included me, carried buckets of crushed rock down the stairs. They will soon be using this rock as a base layer to build a wall on the side of the stairs. It will keep the dirt from washing down the hill as well as provide a place for a community garden. We also got to spend time at a preschool-like building. It was a program run by two women from the Costa Rican Humanitarian Foundation. Their goal was to get the young children in the La Carpio community ready for school in Costa Rica. We were told that many expecting moms from Nicaragua illegally cross the border into Costa Rica to ensure their child is a natural born Costa Rican. Costa Rica provides these children with free healthcare, education, and more. I found the children's development to be very interesting. When working with the 5th grader at Calle Hernandez Primary School earlier in the week, I was able to use my knowledge of Spanish to communicate effectively with him. However, when working with the child at La Carpio, I could not understand him. It is comparable to American children learning to speak English, which is not something I considered. I do not know much about early development in children, so I didn't know what to expect when going to La Carpio. I now understand that children talking gibberish is a universal stage of language growth and development. The last thing we did at La Carpio was watch a short skit about a woman who emigrated from Nicaragua. The presentation was in Spanish, but I could still understand what was going on because of the acting. I have learned more about the value of skits and acting in education. I plan on using these in my class because I have also seen how universal it can be to watch a story come alive.
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AuthorI am an MSU graduate and 4th grade teacher in Carthage, MO. This is just a collection of things I've learned that I thought were important enough to share. Archives
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