Cloud Forest Elementary School

The Cloud Forest School was absouletly stunning. When we walked in we were greeted by a very sweet lady who was in charge of the tours and inviting people to come to the school to volunteer and intern. We walked around the trails of the school at first and saw different plants and trees that were planted by some of the students in the school. The school will be celebrating its twentieth year anniversary this coming up year. We first walked down the trails and came to a section that was the play area for the school, it consisted of a soccer field with unnetted goals, a basketball court and many places to sit and hang out. It was a large space for all the children during their break or downtime to come and relax. The guide told us that it was the "heart" of the school, because that was a time with the kids could come together and relax. I loved all the plants and gardens they had around the school because the majority of the gardens and trees planted were planted by the children of the school. The school only consisted of 180 children, and the grade levels were from preschool to eleventh grade. I liked the way that the school was very enviornmental friendly and Eduardo the only maintenance man in the school told us that the reason they are teaching and showing these children how to farm and maintain plants and fruits because they want to be more enviornmentally friendly and in Monteverde it is very important to know the skills of farming. Monteverde has a lot of open land and has alot of natural and organic foods. When we went into the classrooms we saw that a lot of the teachers were international teachers, and some from America. Fifty percent of the teachers were natives of Costa Rica and the other half were international, from Latin America to the United States. It was very interesting. The school is aiming to be a full bi lengual school in the future. I think that is very important in the development of a school here is incorporating not just spanish literacy but as well as English. As a teacher I feel that incorporating spanish into the classroom would be beneficial as well, considering by the year 2020 almost half of the students in elementary ranged grades will be spanish speaking students. The Cloud Forest School cost as much as $3600 dollars per student to attend because it is a private school. The extra resources, and the beautiful 160 acre land is absolutely amazing. I want to incorporate as much science and enviornmental studies into my classroom as this school did. I loved the vivid colors, displayed student work on the walls as well. This school was a school I could see myself at in the future. I would love to teach english to young children in another country where english is not dominate. We had the opportunity to visit a wonderful school and got to see another side of schools here in Costa Rica. I really enjoyed the visit, and took many new ideas and thoughts from the trip to Cloud Forest School.