Final Reflection

• Do you plan to implement the initiative you developed?  Please be honest.  If yes, what are some specific challenges that you foresee in implementing the initiative you developed?  How do you plan to overcome them?   If you do not plan on implementing your initiative, why not? 
• Yes, I really do.  My main challenge will be students having internet access at home.  This is not something that I will know until I meet my class.  At the beginning of the year I will be giving out information for my Googlesite.  Parents will have an opportunity to see the site in action and how important it is for their student to be able to access this.  Hopefully this will allow them to see they will need to find internet, even if that means going to a friends house so they may use the website.  Students will also have access to the website in our classroom. 

• What other thoughts and ideas do you have for developing future e-learning initiatives in your teaching and learning or professional environment?
• I have had the opportunity to learn about several web 2.0 tools that I will be trying to put into action in my classroom.  From iPads to our computers I would like to include blogger, meta, story bird and so much more.  All these new venues will hopefully help pull students in to the curriculum and get them excited about learning. 

• Early on in the course we discussed our perspectives on e-learning based on prior knowledge and experience. Before this course began, we all came with preconceived notions about online learning.  Having gone through this course and the experience of developing your own initiative, how, if at all, has your perception about e-learning changed?
• I have always thought e-learning is a great way to learn, but I struggled with how it played into learning for students in the primary age group.  However, this class has made me realize my students are just as capable as anyone else to participate in e-learning.  This class has excited me about the possibilities I can put into practice in my classroom!  

Reflections on Learning Assignment Directions and Scoring

 My goal was to create an initiative that is user friendly for first graders.  I have decided to work through google sites.  I have chosen google sites, because I can bookmark this site on my desktop computers in the classroom.  This will make it very easy for students to access our class webpage.  Parents will also have the URL for our site.  I will post homework, lesson videos, podcasts, birthdays, menus, and other important memos on this website weekly.  Students can use this during the day to look through lesson videos and parents can you it at night to remediate learning with their student.  This will also help keep parents informed at all times.  

Miss Connor's Class Website

First Grade Love

As the school year is getting ready to start, my brain has been in creation mode.  I have started a store on Teachers Pay Teachers and have been making things all week.  I wanted to share some of them with you!  

The first document I made is a file folder game that works on Number Identification.  The document is a FREEBIE! 

The second document I created was a matching game that also involved number identification. Number Identification Matching Game ($1)

I have also created two short vowel board game.  I am working on finishing the other vowels. 

Short A Board Game

Short E Board Game

The last two products I created were Cafe Posters and Chevron with Bird Labels. 

-Stephanie 

"In the Jungle"...

Hello everyone!  Sorry that it has been three weeks since posting, but we haven't really had internet, and if we did we had to hike 40 minutes to use it!  So the past three weeks we have been working in the jungle region of Sarapiqui.  The first 11 days we spent up river in a town called Arbolitos.  You may be wondering what classifies as up river, so I will explain.  Essentially we took about a two hour drive to the port and then loaded in a boat and rode up a river for 1.5 hours.  The ride was beautiful and it helped to have the wind blowing through the hair on such a hot day.  When we arrived at Ruth's house, we were greeted by her mother-in-law, sister-in-law, and two precious 3 year olds.  Our living conditions consisted of a guest house where we each had a mattress to sleep on (which is the most important).  Overall, the house was wonderful, and we definitely couldn't have asked for anything better.  We were able to work with several schools in the area that Ruth works with on a regular basis, as well as get the library in order so it was more accessible to the Tico.  Our time with Ruth provided for some great team bonding and card games. Overall we greatly enjoyed our time there, and it was great to see how Ruth is moving in that community.
After these eleven days, we loaded the boat back up and came down the river to the Sarapiqui Learning Center.  The learning center had set up home stays for us, so we were split into 3 (Meg, Sara, and Ronnie) and 4 (Stephen, Levi, Meredith, and myself).  My house mom's name was Olga and we also had 13 year old sister named Yeiling.  The house was absolutely beautiful.  The husband Barney was a construction worker and had built this house on his own.  We had an outdoor shower, large patios (complete with hammock and comfortable chairs), and beds!  Here, we worked on a farm carrying several 50 lbs wooden blocks from the back of the farm to the front (Thursday and Friday).  This task was rather challenging and definitely required a lot of strength. On Saturday, we were able to meet up with the rest of the group and swim in the river for a day of relaxation.  On Monday- Friday, we were scheduled to work at the school in Linda Vista.  The first day we painted the sidewalk green. Day 2 we washed trees to paint them the next day.  Day 3 was raining so we organized the school's warehouse, cleaned up around some plants, and cleaned up down palms.  Day 4 school was closed, so we were sent to a farm instead.  At the farm we planted close to 3,000 yucca trees.  To plant Yucca, you simply cut off a piece of the limb and plant that, therefore, it appeared that we were simply planting sticks.  Day 5 we were able to take as a break day.  In all the afternoons, we were able to log several hours of spade games along with at least one hour of Spanish and English lessons.
To sum up the time spent in the jungle, I am very thankful for that time.  It was great to be able to get away from the internet, cell phone service, and everything else from the world.  I was able to spend several hours simply thinking about my life in Christ and where he sees me going within the next few years.  I also have a completely different view of Ticos raised in the jungle.  My heart goes out to them for their lack of worldly things, but they are so content and happy it is unbelievable. I couldn't help but think of ways I can simplify my life in the future.  Well that's all I have for now! I hope you are all doing well and I will see you soon!

Christian Community

So, I'm finally writing in the blog again (hope you enjoy Jennifer).  This past week, we were able to travel as a team to Jaco.  Jaco is a touristy town where people come to either surf, drink, and do drugs or retire.  Before heading that way, all we had heard was bad things about Jaco, so we were pretty nervous going into the trip. When we arrived, we were greeted by Kevin, a guy originally from Atlanta, Georgia.  Kevin moved down to Costa Rica and had the dreams of creating a library in Jaco, where the Ticos and whoever may actually check out the books.  This is a big deal, because this would make the Jaco library the only one in the country where you could actually check them out. The library accepted used books from people in the community and they were also able to buy out a book store that was closing.We spent most of the week organizing books and painting signs to be hung around! We made several friends in the library: Leanna, Anna, Adam, and of course Kevin.  These people were incredible to work with and the hang out with.  We had a lot of fun with them as a team, and just working with them in general!


I titled this blog Christian Community, because I have never been as welcomed into a community as much as I was in Jaco.  Our first night there we went to church and everyone wanted to talk to us and greet us.  The pastor David was so excited to have us there and interested in each of our personal lives. He talked to us for about an hour after church, which meant a lot to us that he would take this time to get to know us.  On Sunday morning, we were able to go to a house church with Kevin.  We met him up at the library and then walked to a neighbor's house where we were greeted with smiles and breakfast.  Everyone at the house was so nice to us and welcoming to each one of us. We spent time with them worshipping, listening to a sermon, and hanging out together.  The feeling of community was just absolutely astounding.  At the end of church, we talked to several of the people and were invited to dinner with them so they could simply encourage us in our journey.  We ate a delicious meal and had great conversations! On Monday, we were also invited to biblestudies with the same group of people.  The girls went over to the same house from house church and the boys had the opportunity to go to a local restraunt.  The ladies discussed where we saw God currently moving in our lives, which was awesome to get to hear a little bit from every persons story.  All in all, the community was just amazing and I can't express it enough! I pray that I can promote such a Christian community within my own life!


Sorry it is short and to the point, but I'm pretty tired!  We will be leaving for the Sera Peke on Saturday and will be gone for 3 weeks.  I know the internet is sketchy, so if I have the opportunity I will post! I miss you all!




Here is a group picture from the library!



I believe in work, hard work!

The journey that he has sent us on this week has just been incredible!  Sunday morning we went to church and had an amazing service.  The people here have so much joy in their hearts, it makes me wonder what I am missing.  Am I just to ashamed to let it show, or do I not want people to look at me like I'm crazy? This is something that has been working in my heart a lot this trip, because I want to be just as on fire for Christ as this group is. After church, we were hanging around talking to people when some of the youth approached us asked if we would like to join them for youth group that night.  We were so excited that they invited us, because we want to spend more time with them!  We ended up going to a members house and just hanging out for 3 hours.  We sang songs together, played games, and just talked together. It was a great night of community and "shuffling" with everyone. 

We started off Monday by waking up at around 5:00 to make sure we were completely ready to catch the 6:20 bus to Alajuela in order to be at our church by 7.  So we get ready and make our way to the bus stop.  The first bus passes but is full.  The second bus is pretty full, so we let the Costa Ricans around us load up instead, the third bus is not ours.  So we begin wondering what to do. We had seen some other buses go up the mountain and we figured they would be back down shortly. Well, we were wrong.  We finally loaded up a bus at around 7:10 and made it to the church by 7:30.  It was the first day, so they gave us some slack and now we make sure we catch whatever bus comes our way.  

So our first day of work, we load up and the drive begins to look familiar.  When we arrive at the location, we realized we were at the first school we spent time at.(I blogged about it last time) I began to laugh, because this is the school I had already been challenged at with my teaching skills and now I know I'm about to be physically challenged here as well.  To give you a little background on who we were working with, we were paired up with the Alajuela United Methodist Womens group.  We had been warned that we wouldn't be doing much construction, because of all the ladies.  All I can say is I would like to see what they consider hard work!  We were told to dig an entire area of land about 5 inches deeper.  This consisted of pickaxing (sp?) the dirt, shoveling it into a wheel barrel, and then pushing it up a hill to dump it in the back (now repeat for 6 hours!).  Let me tell you, this work was hard.  It was extremely hot outside, and a very tiring task.  However, I could help but look at these women and think about how strong they were.  They were out there working in blue jeans in the heat of the day, without stopping.  I don't think any womens group in America would agree to  dig all day in the summer heat.  They also were a great group to work with because they let us come along side with them to help out this school.  They were fun to talk to and several of them truly invested in us while we were there.  The second day of work consisted of the same thing.  We needed to finish the digging to prepare for the cement to be put down tomorrow.  Whenever the students were on break, they surrounded all of us "Gringos" to watch us work and to spend time in our company which was cool.  We once again had the opportunity to go into the classroom on Tuesday.  We went to the same room I had been working with last time.  I was thrilled to see that the students didn't respond again!  (This meant it wasn't me, they were just a shy bunch!) We sang them songs that had a lot of movements involved and they all just looked at us like we were crazy, but no matter what, we had fun.  After class time, we went back to work and finally everything was finished!

Wednesday we headed to the warehouse to work on the organization there.  I felt bad, because the job a lot of the one week team had done, Meg and I destroyed and had to redo.  We moved boxes from one pallet to a different pallet  all day long.  All in all we did about 5 hours of work and had 4 hours of travel.  

Thursday consisted of the same type work.  We thought we were going have new pallets, but they had not been delivered so we cleaned books and repacked them.  Thursday night we went to a karaoke cafe with Katia and sang the night away. 

Today is Friday and we are spending the day resting and packing for Jaco. We leave tomorrow, and I'm not sure if we will have internet, so I will probably update again next weekend!  

The Journey Begins

Hey everyone! I decided to open up my own blog so I could put some of my personal imput within a blog.  So far, this trip has already been amazing.  We have now officially been in Costa Rica for 12 days, and I truly believe each day has been a blessing.  When we came down, we came with 15 of our friends who were planning on spending one week down here.  It was incredible to get to spend time with them, and get a jump start on our journey.  Most days, we were doing activities that were preparing for our team to finish out.  We spent time at several churches doing Vacation Bible Schools, went to four schools to deliver books, worked construction, and worked in the warehouse.  I am going to write about two distinct events just to give you a glimpse into the work we have been doing.

School # 1: Last Thursday, we had the opportunity to stop by a school on our way up to the rainforest.  Being an education major, I love to spend time at schools, and I was very interested to see how there schools worked here.  When we arrived, we were told the children had prepared a few things for us.  They sang us songs, recited poetry, and the kindergartners even did a dance for us.  It was absolutely precious!  When they were done, we had a chance to sing them some songs in English, and 1 in spanish (which they loved).  After all of this we were split into groups of 3 or 4 and sent to a classroom to begin reading to them.   Here is the real challenge.  I was placed in a 1st grade classroom, which means they spoke very little english.  They knew their numbers and some colors and that was it.  If you know me, I know minimal spanish, so I knew this would be quite the task.  At one point I got very frustrated because I have been trained in how to work with this situation, but as soon as it is in your face, you have no idea what to do.  I quickly ran out of things to say, and the students kept asking me how to say things in english, but I had no idea what they were even saying in spanish.  This was such a humbling experience for me because I went into this trip thinking Im majoring in education I've got this, this wont be hard at all.  Well I couldn;t have been wrong enough. Lastly, when we left, the principal was so gracious for everything we have given them, and it all made since.  We were told we were the first vistiors to even come to that school, and not only that, but we were North Americans, which meant even more to them.  

School # 4: Lady Gladys Private School.  This school was started by a man named John who had moved to Costa Rica to retire.  Just to give you a little back ground on him, he is british.  He grew up with his mother in the country side, where they were very poor.  He didnt have much, but they made the most of what they did have.  He ended up starting a very successful carpet company that inturn made him rather wealthy.  When he decided to move to Costa Rica, he was wondering what he might do.  One day, he was in the airport and he thought I'm going to build a school for poor children, and that he did.  He began the process of looking for an area to help out, and found one of the worst neighborhoods in Costa Rica, unfortunately, there was no land for them to build a school there, so they continued to process until they came across land in San Jose near a very poor community.  John knew this would be the place to go.  He then began building a school, and at some point met Carl Dickerson, the man who is in charge of my trip.  Carl began helping John in any way he could, but especially by donating books.  Johns main vision for this school is to be a place that the children can come and learn english along with every other subject.  However, he hopes that the young children speaking english will help pull other students into the school.  The students pay around $25 dollars a month to go to school there and $2 dollars a day to eat lunch there.  The lunchs are provided by the mothers of the students, which I though was very neat!  The children can begin at the age of 4, but there is an application process.  John has recently put in a computer lab, which is a very big deal.  Most school in Costa Rica do not have that, so this put there school even that much ahead!  One quick story about that day:  When we went with the four year olds to lunch, Meg noticed that one girl was just eating crackers.  Meg asked the teacher if she could give her some of her food, but of course the teacher said no simply because if you give her food once, she will expect food always.  The teacher came and shared some of the little girls story with us saying that her mother was in jail and her father was gone, which left her under the care of he grandmother.  Unfortunately her grandmother was unable to provide for her, which broke our hearts.  However, it is very cool to see that John recognized that and gave this student a spot at the school, so she may have a better life in the future.  All in all, the students at this school had so much joy, it was incredible!  I am so proud of the work John has done and can't wait to go back to this school later on this summer!!  If you would like to check out their website its: http://www.educatingchildren.org/

Ill update again once we start working which begins Monday! 

Love you and miss you all!

Stephanie