Final Reflection

Volcan Arenal, The beautiful Scenary and A Stick Bug

Through this whole experience I have learned a lot about myself and my teaching. I learned that not everything you learn or teach is going to be easy, and not ever student you teach will be on the same level or be able to comprehend things as well as others. As I was in Spanish classes these past few weeks I found myself becoming very frustrated in classes. I wouldn't comprehend something, and would get so down on myself. The way that I have overcome the frustration is really taking in the fact that I am a new language learner and not everything is going to come naturally to me. I need to take the time to practice, and speak the different language in order to enhance my learning. As a teacher I learned that I need to take more steps in engaging students, more science based, research based, and elaboration on subjects. I will not only focus on reading and math, but also focus on incorporating science, social studies and other core subjects into math, and reading. As far as my outlooks on things, coming to Costa Rica I realized that not ever country is going to be like the United States. I have never been out of the country before and it was a culture shock for me. I have yet to see a house that looks like my house in the United States. The thing is here that people don't even take into consideration the conditions of their housing because they are more focused on working, learning and family life. Which I believe are three very important things in life. Sometimes us as Americans are so worried about money, struggles, and other aspects of life they seem very unimportant to the people of Costa Rica. While being here, to other people along with myself in the group complained about being tired and how we wanted more free time, but I looked at my Mama Tica who woke up every morning around five to start her daily task of getting the children ready, cleaning, doing laundry, and making breakfast. she never takes naps and keeps going until dinner ends around eight. She always seems to have a smile on her face, and I have yet to hear her complain about anything to me. She never says that she is tried and never complains about the work. She just does it because it is part of her life. I learned a lot about learning while I was here, and realized that learning can be creative, and fun, but we shouldn't focus our learning and teaching around being fun. We need to be able to engage our students in different ways, and doing trial and error with our students to find out what can be effective for them.