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With Alejandra
A great teacher! Ale did a great job of making sure Ellie integrated into the class even at the beginning when she didn't speak any Spanish. Thanks Ale! We're gonna miss you!Now that summer vacation is upon us, we have a chance to look back at the school year that was. (Last Friday, June 30, was Ellie’s last day of school and Ari’s was the week before that.) It is hard to believe that the whole school year has gone. In some ways it flew by so quickly it hardly seems like a blink. In other ways, the beginning of the school year seems like it was a very long time ago. It is quite a paradox and I can’t seem to put it into words - but I’m sure you know what I mean.
In the works of the Grate philosophers, “What a long, strange trip it’s been.” The year started off normally enough -- Ari started the second grade at Quarry Hill in Mrs. Lowe’s class and Ellie was back with Ms. Sheryl and Ms. Dana at Kol Emet. After an extended strike, a long journey, a drawn out vacation replete with Dara’s home-school, we ended up in Heredia - Ari at the European School and Ellie at the small preschool around the corner.
Here, at the end of each semester, it is standard practice to meet with
What's wrong?
The two 2nd grade classes had an end-of-school field trip to a nearby farm. There were horses to ride, a stream to explore, room to play soccer and more. Mark even went along and enjoyed seeing the kids playing. And, don't worry, this was just a little joke... the teachers to review progress and receive the kids’ report cards. Unlike in the US, there is no schedule to the meetings or appointments set up. It is just come on Friday to meet with the teacher. (By the way, it seems that this is the way many doctors here set up their days, too - you either get an appointment at 9:00 or at 3:00 - when they come back from lunch. Everyone else gets the same appointment time so you can end up waiting a long time).
As I’ve mentioned before, we really liked Ari’s school, the European School, and his teachers. Looking back at some of his work from earlier in the year - both from back in the US and back from when he started here - it is incredible the academic progress that he has made. One of his year-end projects was to write an autobiography - he worked really hard on it and we think it turned out great.
In addition, although he doesn’t let on with us, he is doing really well with his Spanish. He is by no means fluent, but he knows enough that when he finds some kids
Sack race
At Ari's end-of-school picnic, even the teachers got in on the sack-race action. That's Ari, right in the middle with the baseball cap. to play with, he can jump right in with them and get along. This week, he’s even attended a couple of camps at the Inbioparque, the local park where Dara works that’s dedicated to biodiversity education, and done just fine learning, talking and playing with the other kids in Spanish. About a month ago, his Spanish assignment was to write a story. Here it is (just as he wrote it). If you know Spanish, you can see he needs work on spelling and conjugating verbs. But even so, I think it is pretty impressive. I couldn’t have written anything like this after years of high school Spanish (heck, I probably couldn’t have even did it in English).
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El Gigante, el pastor y el enano (The Giant, the Shepherd and the Dwarf)
En un país fueron un gigante. Pero la gigante no tiene amigos. En la misma país fue un enano y un pastor. El enano no tiene amigos tambien, tambien el pastor no tiene amigos. Ese dia la gigante diho, “Quiero un amigo, voy abaho la montaña a booscar por amigo.” Ese mismo dia el enano dijo, “Quiero un amigo, voy al (town?) a buscar por amigos.”
Poem Prop
As we've said in earlier blogs, Ari had to make a prop each week to go along with the poem they had to memorize and recite in front of the class. This diorama went along with, you guessed it!, a poem about the ocean and sea creatures. Y tambien ese misma dia, el pastor dije, “Quiero un amigo, voy al (town?) a booscar por amigos.”
Entonces los tres de eyos va al centero. Cuando los tres vieron los dos otros, se va y esconde el gigante atras de Poas, el pastor en un arbol de manzanas (que no tiene mucho manzanas) y el enano en un flor grande de color violeta. Despues de mucho tiempo, el pastor dije, “estoy aqui a buscar por amigos, no a esconde en un arbol de manzanas.” Entonces el pastor va afuera del arbol despues el gigante y el enano. El pastor dile, “vamos a estar amigos.” “Esta bien,” dije la gigante. “O.K.” dije el enano. Y ellos ablan por horas.
Translation:
In a country there was a giant. But the giant didn’t have friends. In the same country there was a dwarf and a shepherd. The dwarf didn’t have friends too, also the shepherd didn’t have friends. That day the giant said, “I want a friend, I’m going down the mountain to look for a friend.” That same day, the dwarf said, “I want a friend, I’m going to town to look for friends.” And also that same day,
With Jafet
Jafet was upset with Ellie the last day of school so we were lucky to get this picture. We think he knew that she wasn't coming back. the shepherd said, “I want a friend. I’m going to town to look for friends.”
Then the three of them go to the center. When the three saw the other two, they go and hide - the giant behind Volcano Poas, the shepherd in an apple tree (which doesn’t have many apples) and the dwarf in a big, purple flower. After a long time, the shepherd says, “I am here to look for friends, not hide in an apple tree.” Then the shepherd goes out of the tree and later the giant and the dwarf. The shepherd says to them, “Let’s be friends.” “That’s good,” says the giant. “O.K.” says the dwarf. And they talk for hours.
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Aside from the academics, his teachers gave us very positive reports -- he is well liked and seems to have made friends easily. As I mentioned in the last blog or the one before, his best friend, Isaac, is returning to the U.S. Although I didn’t realize it at the time, Isaac’s presence was a tremendous help to Ari in making the transition to the new school. I was thinking that Isaac’s absence will be a big deal for Ari,
Music Class
That is Dara's hand in the top right. She teaches Music/English every Friday at the preschool to the entire school all at once (about 50 kids ranging in age from 1 year to 6 years). It's a bit nutty but those Costa Rican kids have amazing rhythm and they love to dance and move! Dara's going to continue classes even after Ellie changes schools. but he doesn’t seem to mind. Since he is friendly with the other kids in the class now, and is doing pretty well in Spanish, maybe it won’t be a problem. Also, both of this year’s 3rd grade teachers are leaving the school (one was Isaac’s mom and the other was Ari’s friend, Sam’s mom) so we’ll have to see who they get as replacements.
Ellie really did well, too - for the first couple months, there were often times getting Ellie to school in the morning was a struggle (I don’t want to go, it’s too long, I don’t like it). For the second half of the semester, though, there was none of that. She definitely made some good friends, had a lot of fun and learned a great deal.
Most heartening to us was to hear what a nice, caring person she is. We heard this both from her teacher, Alejandra (who we really like) and from Ta-ti, the “grandfather” of the school (the father of Yendry, the director. He is a super-nice guy who clearly loves the kids and relishes his “grandfather/helper/handy-man” role. I think I have mentioned Yendry in the past. I guess I
Miss Norma
Miss Norma was Ari's head teacher this year for 2nd grade. (He also had Miss Xochitl as his assistant teacher...two teachers for 16 kids! Gotta love that!) We loved her. Her sense of humor and even temper kept the kids in line and helped Ari get back on track when he got sad at the beginning of the year. would charitably describe her as business-like - hardly the warm and fuzzy person you’d expect as a pre-school director. Well, Ta-ti is very much the opposite of this). After meeting with Alejandra, we stayed for a few minutes at the school so the kids could play outside. That was when Ta-ti came up to us and told us about what he had observed and about what a special, caring person Ellie is.
At her school, the kids’ ages range from babies up to kindergarteners. Ellie loved playing with and taking care of the little ones - the different aged kids were in different classes, but there was plenty of time each day such as at circle-time, playing outside and more, that they were all together.
In addition, there is a boy at the school, Jafet, who has Down’s Syndrome. Even though Jafet is younger, he was in Ellie’s class - since Alejandra has a brother with Down’s Syndrome, she has experience dealing with children with Down’s Syndrome. Ellie was very supportive of Jafet, often giving him hugs, helping him wipe his nose, helping the teacher to make sure he was included in games, and more. At first the
Amanda and Xochitl
Amanda was the teacher of the other 2nd grade class (and the teacher for Ari's reading group). Xochitl was the assistant teacher in Ari's class. other kids were not so nice to him and shunned him (he often has a runny nose since he has a weakened immune system due to the Downs and they would tell him he was disgusting.). After Ellie’s example, however, he was more accepted, or at least tolerated, by the other kids. I don’t think that Ellie had any real experience dealing with children with disabilities - either physical or mental. Although we’d heard her talk about Jafet and we knew that she was nice to him, it made us very proud to hear about it from others and how special they think Ellie is.
It is with mixed emotions that we are going to move Ellie from her school over to the European School with Ari. It is what she really wants to do - all she talks about is wanting to go to school with her brother. Well, at least her old school is close by, so we can always go visit and we will try to keep in touch with her friends there.
Well, it’s vacation now - a relatively short vacation - school starts up again July 31. We’re off to the beach for
Autobiography Page 1
Here is the first page of Ari's autobiography. Sorry, I don't think we can get it quite clear enough to read. "Hello my name is Ari Bortman. I am seven years old. This autobiography will tell you all about my life until this very day, Monday June 12, 2006." a couple days, then to Nicaragua (need to leave the country to get our visa renewed) and Nana and Pop-pop are coming for a visit. Before we know it, it will be back to school.
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Eli
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Ari's story
Very impressive job by Ari in writing that story. I guess you need a Spanish spell check program on your computer to help him -- it's obvious that many of the spelling errors result from the fact that some Spanish sounds are not spelled the way they are in English.