It’s official. School has started and Kevin and I are finally doing what we came to do as Peace Corps volunteers! So far, the experience has been very educational.
· There are no lockers at either of our schools. Kids keep their stuff with them all day long.
The Costa Rican school system differs from that of the United States in many ways. Here are just a few of the differences we’ve noticed at our schools so far:
· Seventh and eighth grades are included in high school. There are no Spanish words here for freshman, sophomore, junior and senior. However, instead of saying tenth and eleventh grade, they say fourth and fifth year.
· School is required for all kids until they turn 14.
· Regular (academic) schools go up to 11th grade and technical schools go up to 12th.
· There are serious final exams at the end of each high school year. If a student doesn’t pass it in December, they have the opportunity to study up over their vacations and take the test again during the first week of school in February. While giving kids an extra chance to be promoted to the next grade, it also makes the first week of school a little chaotic because some students don’t know what grade they’re officially going to be in until all of the testing is over in February.
· All students wear uniforms. Most involve navy blue pants and either light blue or white dress shirts.
· At our schools, teachers have photocopies of worksheets/activities made, but the school doesn’t pay for the paper – the students do. Teachers either give their papers to be copied to the person in charge of the photocopier (privately owned and operated), or to the kids, who often go one by one to pay for copies of things they want. This saves on money and paper, but the downside is kids don’t always make the copies they’re assigned, and it results into under-utilized class time. The most time-effective method is when teachers pay up front for the copies and students pay them back in the classroom. Each page generally costs 10 colones, or 2 cents.
· We rarely see books used in our classrooms. It’s not like in the U.S. where school districts provide textbooks for the students. They don’t exist here unless a teacher wants his or her students to use a specific book, which he or she then has to either by them, buy a copy and photocopy it, or ask the students to buy them.
· There is a 25-minute breakfast/coffee break after second period. Many teachers go to the cafeteria to eat breakfast, which can be anything from gallo pinto (rice and beans), tortillas, pancakes, to plantains with sour cream.
· After eating off of their real plates, cups and silverware in the cafeteria (no throwaways here), students and teachers wash their own dishes. In Kevin’s school, any food left uneaten goes into a bucket and is fed to the cows out back.
· Behind both of our schools are preserved rain forests filled with monkeys, exotic birds, venomous snakes, poisonous frogs and plants that, if touched, are dangerous for your skin. That’s why Kevin cringed the other day when he saw the tourism teacher take his students into the jungle for a morning hike.
· Many students don’t register for classes until the first day of school or anytime in the following 2 weeks. This means that principals are usually in the dark about how many students are in each grade, and therefore how many teachers they will need for the year. When they do get some final numbers, they go to the Ministry of Education and ask for more teachers to be sent (principals don’t hire them directly). This means lots of shuffling around of classes and teachers in the first month of school. Teachers sometimes don’t know what classes or even what grades they are teaching until school begins.
· Since many of our schools’ students travel from many miles away, the vast majority of them ride the bus to and from school. The buses depart school about 5-10 minutes after the final bell rings, which means that the schools are almost immediately deserted. There are no after-school sports, clubs, or activities after school at either of our high schools.
· Unlike in most U.S. high schools, the teachers here move from classroom to classroom and the students stay put. This means that teachers must carry their materials with them all day long.
· Classroom furnishings in our schools are very basic: a teacher’s desk, a chalkboard (or whiteboard if you’re lucky), student desks, and chairs. (At my school we are about 70 chairs short.) There are no built-in closets or storage space.
· The computer labs at both of our schools have air conditioning, which is really something special. This is necessary to keep the computers functioning in such a humid and dusty area. Most other classrooms are decked out with fans, but on a scorching day, the computer labs feel awfully nice.
· Windows here do not always have glass windowpanes. In fact, many windows in our schools are covered with bars or chain-link fence.
Despite all of these differences, the most important parts of education are the same here as they are back home: parents, teachers and administrators care deeply about the students’ education, students have to work hard to succeed in school, teachers are stressed about test scores and about cramming loads of material into a short school year, and most teenage students are more much more concerned about the students sitting next to them, the most recent gossip, and the way they look than what they should be learning. It’s good to know that some things never change!
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