Teaching in the Banana Fields

We were mightily blessed for two weeks when Hal and Scarlet Geiger and their daughter Ammy flew down to Costa Rica with the hopes of serving at the orphanage. However,  the orphanage had been quiet for two weeks before this so Joel Sanchez and Mark Roth both suggested we start working at the rural schools. I thought this was a great way to test drive our curriculum for the orphanage and to get our feet wet in the schools here. So at the Duruy school we started working with both teachers. Scartlet and Ammy focused on working with the PK-Kindergarten classroom while Hal, Deanne and I worked with grades 1-6. In total there are 23 kids across these 8 grade levels. 
          We met with Betty, the lead teacher in the 1st through 6th grade classroom on the Monday after the Geiger's arrived. What was really surprising was that Betty speaks English but is swamped teaching all of the levels and had not been able to integrate English into her curriculum. She really wanted help. In the first meeting with her, she started asking 'When, when, when' in both Spanish and English. When could we start? So I told her we could teach on Tuesdays and Thursdays. We agreed upon the 8:55am to 10:15am slot she said would work best in her curriculum. Could we start the next day? YES! This school takes nearly an hour and a half to get to from where we are staying. The last 11 miles are VeRy, vErY, VeRy BuMpY. The road goes through banana plantations and then into the mountains on a precarious one way road. I feel like a bobble head everytime I return from a trip up there. We worked with the Geiger's to tweak the curriculum to fit their talents. Scarlet brought some great Montessorian teaching ideas and shared them with the kids and the PreK/Kindergarten teacher. Ammy was able to add her guitar talents to spice up some great English teaching lyrics like "Put your left foot in and put your left foot out..." The kids LOVED it. She shared these songs with the kids in both classrooms. Hal put his teaching talent to work in helping fix up the extra classroom that we were using. He set up the Tool Team with the older kids and they got to work fixing a broken down teachers desk, putting up a whiteboard and doing a number of electrical projects. In the end, Betty was incredibly thankful for the help that was donated by the Tool Team. 
          It was great while the Geigers were here because we were able to split the kids up and try out some interesting ideas. For some reason, reading books like the bilingual Dr. Seuss "Cat in the Hat" to the kids didn't work as well as we thought it might. Assessing the kids' English levels also took longer to do than we originally planned.

          In addition to repairing a number of items at the school, we donated a number of books and materials to the school. Not only did it feel great to help out at this school, but our fellow blogger, Joel Sanchez has three kids that go here. It is great helping out the fantastic children of a fellow believer.
          Before the Geiger's flew back to the USA, we sent an email to the orphanage, mentioning that we would be dropping by the next day to get some dictionaries that we left there. We  stored five boxes of books, paper and curriculum materials there for the day when we start working there. So the Geigers visited the orphanage. I gave them a short tour after we picked up our books. It was great to see some of the kids as well as reaffirm that we are still here.