Day 20- Education Importance

Today has been a vary productive day and we have done a lot! We started off our day visiting a local coffee co-op in which we learned a lot about how the farm is run and the products that the farm grew. The man who owns part of the farm came to introduce to us all about his farm and the thought that goes into developing a successful operation. He was very excited that all of us in the group were aspiring teachers and gave us a short lecture on the importance of education in Costa Rica. In this country, there is no military, but instead, they gave all the money that they would spend on military to the education system. Education is so important to their culture and is one of the top four things that they focus on the most. He showed us a map of the farm and where everything is planted on their land. He was asking us questions as to why certain areas were used for growing different crops and the importance of having pastures along with the growing areas. When he was asking us questions like why they grew certain crops and not others, we all gave him economic answers like how it would make more money and produce more goods. It was interesting to see his reaction to our answers because the reason for growing crops in certain areas was not solely based on money like our American brains are trained to think. There are more reasons like the cows walk on the land in a certain area so the soil is more compact making it hard for water to get further into the ground. It was very interesting to see his way of thinking and the way of thinking of most Costa Ricans. We then went and collected white avocado seeds that come from a certain tree in their land that we can replant to reforest the area. We picked the seeds and planted them in little bags so they can grow and be replanted into the land. We then took some of the plants that had been growing for awhile and planted them in an area that they were about to change from pasture to crop area. We all got to plant our own personal tree and put our name next to it! This was a great experience and I loved the educational talk that he gave to us because it provided me with a new way of looking at things and how everything does not always have to be about money.

From the farm, we had lunch at a local restaurant while discussing how difficult it is to teach language. This was a very interesting conversation in which we discussed the difficulties of how to pronounce words and decode words. Dr. Powell told us that there are 11 different ways to pronounce the 'sh' sound in our English language and how each different part of the United States has their own dialect that is taught in schools. This made me realize the difficulties that all students face with learning languages and how we as teachers need to help our students learn by multiple examples and uses throughout the day.