It is 5 a.m. and here I sit, outside my little cottage looking at this gorgeous and huge volcano placed right in front of my eyes. I can hear birds singing, frogs croaking, and a faint wind blowing. Here, I am reminded of all of the countless blessings I have been given from God. There is no way you couldn't be happy when you are sitting at the base of a volcano. This morning, I am given the chance to reflect on everything that I have learned, seen, and witnessed while I have been here.
One of the biggest things that I will take away from this trip is the language barrier that presents itself every single day that I have been here. From the time we flew into Costa Rica, until now, everyday has been such a challenge learning and speaking Spanish. When I decided to come on this trip, I thought that I knew enough Spanish to at least get me around while I was here, but from the moment we hit customs, I knew that I was not as equipped as I thought I was. The first few days, we did more tourist-y type of things so I did not need to use Spanish too much, but once we arrived at CPI (our school where we are taught Spanish), I needed to switch on my brain to Spanish mode. I remember the first day of Spanish class and after about 1 hour of instruction, my brain completely shut off and I became very frustrated learning from a teacher who hardly knew any English. This instantly made a connection in my mind to the ESL students who come to school in the United States and are expected to sit though school all day not having a clue as to what the teacher is saying. I understand now why these students pull their hoods up over their head and lay their head on their desk and shut down for the rest of the day. Learning another language is very hard work and it takes a very special teacher to realize the difficulty of the situation and spend quality time working with the ESL students. As the week of Spanish instruction went on, I became less frustrated because our instructor made the material very engaging and we began learning through games and conversation of our everyday lives. It also helped that our teacher would ask us how to say a few words in English too so it made us feel proud that she was attempting to show interest in our language too. It was very hard for me to be interested at all in class when I was sick this past week. My head was already pounding and the last thing I wanted to do was sit in class and try to learn something that was very difficult for me. I quickly came to realize that I need to teach my students that it is okay to struggle and not everything in life is going to come easy. We, as teachers, need to celebrate those struggles and help our students get through them. I finally had a breakthrough one night with my family when I was at home talking to my mama tica and I was able to put about 5 sentences together quickly without hardly thinking about it too much and she was able to understand everything that I was saying! I know that I was not grammatically correct on everything, but for me to spit out 5 detailed sentences was awesome for me! If I only take one thing away from this experience, it would be how I can relate and help any ESL student that comes into my future classroom. By not pushing them to the side to work on something else while the rest of the students are learning, I will be able help them through their struggles and have just as high expectations for them as I do with my other students. I think a lot of times, people have lower expectations for students who come from a lower socio-economic status, but in my opinion and from what we have discussed in our classes here, it should almost be the opposite and we should show the lower SES (socio-economic status) that they can do just as much with what they have as the students who come from a higher socio-economic status. Money does not hinder learning and that is one thing that I have really gained from this experience. Many people living in Costa Rica are not as well off as the United States, but that does not mean on any level that they are not as smart or they can't learn the same things that the students in the United States are learning.
I am so grateful for this experience I have had so far being here. I have learned a lot about myself and students in classrooms. It has opened my eyes to thing that I had never thought about before and because of that, I think that it will make me a more effective teacher. We still have one more week left and still a lot of learning to do! I am looking forward to what is to come in this next week and then applying my learning to the classrooms when I get back!
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