Living Life Tico Style: Sunday, May 30th

Hopefully, my friends who are science aficionados, will forgive me for saying that I have never really found fascination with the formation and dynamics of volcanoes…until this weekend. WOW! Imagine sitting in the dark (and I mean real darkness where there are no city lights) on a starry, moonlit night and watching red lava tumble down the side of a gigantic volcano in front of you. Absolutely AWESOME! This past weekend, we very fortunate to experience two clear, blue sky days while visiting La Fortuna and Arenal Volcano. On Saturday night, our guide took us to a spot out in the country where all the locals gathered to watch the volcano on a clear night and brought along blankets, foods, coolers, kids—much like us preparing to watch the 4^th of July fireworks. Whenever the volcano percolated and sent forth a few puffs, the ooo’s and chants of “LAVA, LAVA, LAVA” began followed by echoes of “AAAHH’s” Spectacular! Nature provided us an unforgetable Memorial Day weekend.

Along the way to La Fortuna we saw windmills that supply energy to 60,000 people here in Costa Rica. They were quiet and looked spectacular perched atop a mountain.

Our visits to the local public primary school continue to touch our hearts. The children are so responsive to our presence yet so shy about using the English they are learning. We coax them and they coax us along with our Spanish. When we go on our weekend trips, it is amazing to see tiny buildings that are schools, and they look very poor. However, every classroom we have observed is clean and there are textbooks.

My langauage experience with my host family centers primarily around food, extended family, the weather, the tv news, and my homework. It has been a pleasure to meet their two preschool neices who have made me feel succussful at my language attempts. It is much easier to communicate in short simple sentences when beginning a new language.

I have experienced some success practicing my language skills in town. It helps when the town you live in is a tourist town and many merchants are bilingual. Their added support motivates me to use the language because I feel confident they will help me when I ask questions. I understand their motivation is different than the classroom experience, but the support builds confidence.

My classroom experience at learning Spanish is still not a pleasant experience for me. I do not fault the teacher. I am reminded often that the program requires the teacher to make us speak and listen to Spanish all the time. So that is what we do. When a person experiences an allergy, he learns not to repeat the experience that caused the problem. By the same token, when a student does not respond to one method that a teacher utilizes over and over, then why can´t the method be changed to see if a different student response would occur?

My experience as a language arts teacher gives me a few tools to use as I learn Spanish. It helps to understand the parts of speech, plural and singular forms of nouns, first, second, and third person, and subject/verb agreement. There are times where knowing the formula can create the answer without knowing the vocabulary content.

I believe field trips, like our trip to Arenal Volcano, enrich our vocabularies and boost our mojo for learning. Field trips allow one to experience learning in different modalities. All students and schools should be allowed at least one field trip opportunity every year. It may be the one experience that ignites the spark to learn instead of repeated classroom methodology that sometimes builds frustration within that leads to an eruption of tardies, excuses, absences, and withdrawal.

This week experiences of excited adventurers, reluctant learners, and great past ESL students prompted ¨Please Don´t Call On Me¨.

Please Don´t Call On Me