Plants, Parents, Goats, and Responsibility

Warning- There is a lot of text in this post. I will post more pictures soon.


This picture shows Anna, the high school science teacher, working with two of her students to measure trees on the plots Patricia Townsend set up for her (and the school's) research. Below, the Head of the School awards a medal to Milton's Intern, Jane, after a 10K running race over the weekend that was a fundraiser for the scholarship program at the school.
February 14, 2009
Happy Valentine’s Day!
It is the end of another busy week. I am still impressed by how much goes on at and around the school every week.
Horses
Wednesday, while Kaz and I were getting ready for school, we heard a bunch of vehicles honking. This is highly unusual. The most common source of noise here is the birds. I've never seen or heard a plane or anything else that is loud, except for the winds and rains we had the last couple of weeks. The honking seemed to be coming from our road just down the hill a bit. Even more strangely, the honking continued, so we came out to the front porch to see what was going on. Just then, two very large wild horses galloped up the hill in the road, followed by the three school buses and a series of vans and cars that were trying to get up the hill without stopping and without hitting the horses, who were apparently weaving across the road carelessly. Vehicles do not like to stop on our road (the road up to the school) because it is so steep. If they lose momentum, it can be nearly impossible to make it to the top of the hill. When Kaz and I left the house and started walking up the hill a few minutes later, the horses were standing in our neighbor’s yard. I think they were the largest horses I have ever seen.
Rain, Rain Go Away
Overall, the winds have died down since our first two weeks here, and the rain has diminished a lot. The weather is much nicer now. However, it still rains nearly every day at least a little bit. Everyone carries a slicker at all times, and some of the kids wear rain boots to school every day. To repeat the obvious- it sure rains a lot in the rain forest!
Preschool and Kindergarten
I spent this week helping both Dolly and Milton with their environmental education classes.
Milton and I took the preschoolers out to see trees that older students had planted several years ago. We also collected seeds from a tree to take back to the greenhouse so the kids could plant them. After the seeds germinate, the kids will move the seedlings into the forest to help with the reforestation effort. To each seedling s/he plants, the child will attach a tag with his or her name, the name of the tree, and the date, and s/he will collect data on the growth of the tree(s) for as long as they attend the school- potentially the next 13 years.
In their own garden outside the classroom, the preschoolers are growing corn, cilantro, and tomatoes.
I just looked up from my porch and saw the most beautiful rainbow outside. Have to go take a picture…back now.
The kindergartners this week were too fidgety to do anything terribly focused, so we took them out into the woods and played a Simon Says-like game that taught them how to listen, but also helped them to get all the willies out.
First and Second Grades
With the first and second graders, we planted vegetables in the garden, including carrots, cilantro, and radishes. The kids were so careful to put only two radish seeds in each hole (“Solo dos semillas en cada hueca,” they kept reminding each other). They were equally careful to make the “lines” for the carrot seeds shallow enough.
Third and Fourth Grades
With the third and fourth graders, we explored photosynthesis. The first thing they did was clip pieces of cardboard onto leaves on the plants growing outside their classrooms. We will remove the cardboard next week and see what happened to the leaves underneath. My personal goal with the lesson was for the kids to understand photosynthesis and plant growth better than all the Harvard undergraduates Phil Sadler interviewed on graduation day in his documentary “Private Minds.” Among other things, what Sadler’s documentary showed was that most of the students graduating from Harvard had no idea where the mass of “stuff” that makes up a tree comes from.
So, my goal was to get our students to understand that all of the mass is the carbon found in plants and trees that starts out as carbon dioxide in the air. Yes, this seems crazy- how can something as invisible and seemingly weightless as carbon dioxide in the air be converted into the very visible, heavy trunk of a tree? But, by admitting upfront that this seems counterintuitive, the kids seemed to have no trouble getting it.
We followed up two days later to show the kids some stomata under a microscope. Stomata are the tiny “holes” in the leaf that allow air (which contains carbon dioxide) to enter into the leaf. That day, the kids still remembered that all of the “stuff” that makes up a tree starts out as carbon dioxide in the air. I’ll be interested to see if they still remember in June.
Fifth and Sixth Grades
The fifth and sixth graders spent time this week weeding the gardens for which they are responsible. While weeding, I learned from them that all the electricity here in Monteverde is hydro- and geothermal. They do not burn any coal. With all the rain, hydro-power seems like a no-brainer, and there is an active volcano not far away called Arenal, hence the geothermal energy. The school has just equipped one classroom gazebo with solar panels. The kids also found two enormous toads buried one on top of the other in the garden. They were a type of sapo, but not the famous sapo dorado that has gone extinct. At least everyone expects they have gone extinct because no one has seen any sapo dorados since 1988. Someone told me that, technically, you can't call a species extinct until it has not been seen for a hundred years. Okay.
Seventh, Eighth, Ninth, and Tenth Grades
The seventh through tenth grades had several options this week. There was the two-hour session with the expert on orchids, the guest lecturers who talked about their research on loons and on another day taught the kids methods for counting and identifying fauna in the area, the group that recycled milk cartons by making them into wallets and change purses, and the group that gave their last few presentations to fellow students on the dump and recycling and have now presented to every class in the school.
Eleventh Grade
The eleventh graders spent time this week learning how to collect accurate data on the plots set up by Patricia Townsend, the graduate student from the University of Washington who is collecting data for her dissertation from 16 plots she marked out on the campus. The eleventh graders are helping her, and will be entrusted to collect data after Patricia returns to Washington state for a time.
When the Wife of the Head of the School is also a Student’s Mother
Whenever you run a school or teach students, you inevitably have to deal with parents who have issues with their child’s education. The parent with issues this week happened to be the wife of the Head of the School who felt her preschooler was not getting enough exposure to environmental science. Apparently, her husband was not able to convince her either that their son WAS getting plenty of exposure to environmental science or that, as the Head of the School, he could take care of it, so instead he delivered a handwritten note from his wife to Dolly. I thought this an odd way for him to handle the situation.
Dolly suggested that the mother come in to meet with her husband (as both concerned Father and Head of the School), Dolly, me, Milton, and the preschool teachers (there are two in that classroom) so we could let her know what all we were doing with the preschoolers in the area of environmental science. She insisted on meeting just with Dolly, then canceled the appointment hours before the agreed upon time. In my opinion, an unnecessary amount of person hours were spent on this issue over several days, and many staff members were unnecessarily put on the defensive. What I took away from the experience is that it is important to both sympathize with and educate parents in a way in which they feel heard and supported. I also came away wondering about Scott’s influence as both a Husband and Head of School, since he should have been able to handle this issue easily on his own from both of those vantage points.
Goats and Chickens
Late Friday afternoon, Milton came to ask for Dolly’s and my support to buy some chickens and a pregnant goat for the school. It was really interesting to hear Milton and Dolly talk to each other because Dolly’s Spanish is as rudimentary as Milton’s English. I translated a little bit for them, but also let them communicate in their own, choppy way, because it seemed important for them to speak directly to one another. I was impressed by how little they allowed the language barrier to prevent them from communicating and how much they were able to communicate despite the obvious challenges in doing so.
Milton envisions the youngest children incubating eggs and raising resulting chicks for 6 weeks, then selling them for meat. Other chickens could be kept to produce eggs, but apparently this is a less desirable activity to undertake. The goat would be milked. Eventually, Milton wants to have other animals, too. Dolly agreed with all the ways Milton mentioned tying animal husbandry to the curriculum. She also agreed they should teach more about fauna since they have emphasized flora so much at the school.
The difficulty, Milton says, is that he has suggested buying animals before, but has not received the support of the administration. We decided to approach the 1st and 2nd grade teachers first to see if they agree with Milton’s ideas about how having animals would enhance their curricula. If we can get their enthusiastic buy-in and ideas, the five of us will feel ready to approach Scott. Milton says that taking care of the animals would cost only $100/year and that the school would make the money back by selling chickens and eggs.
Me- Responsible?
Today, a Saturday and Valentine’s Day, the school held a huge fundraising event consisting of a walk, a running race, sales of food, songs played and sung by students, DJ music (beginning with the Costa Rican national anthem), and activities such as pin the hummingbird on the flower, yoga, etc.
The new Development Director for the school, who organized the event, asked me midweek if I would please “man” station #9, the last water station of the 10K race. She was working from a list of jobs the former Development Director had left her, on which was written, “Station #9- this job is for a VERY RESPONSIBLE PERSON.” “You are a very responsible person, right?” she asked me. “Um, yeah, sure,” I replied. “You’ll need to recruit three or four students to help you,” she added. “No problem, I said.”
Of course, as of this morning, the only student I was able to recruit to help me was Kaz, so I proceeded to convince myself that he and I could handle the water station by ouselves. After all, the field would be pretty spread out by water station #9, right? Well, I was right about that part; after running for 45-80 minutes up and down steep hills, the first six or seven runners came at five minute intervals and we were having no trouble at all providing them with water.
Then, the totally unexpected happened. The next runner to pass, a 14 year-old boy, yelled to me, “Do you have a radio? A woman running has fallen back there. ” He was frantic. I could not see anyone lying in the road, so I concluded she must have fallen around the bend, which was pretty far back. What should I do?
I did not have a radio or a car, and did not have any way of getting in touch with anyone who did. I could run back to find the fallen runner myself and try to help her, but that would take a long time, I would be exhausted when I reached her, I wasn’t sure I could help her by myself, I suspected she needed help sooner than I could reach her anyway, and I wasn’t supposed to leave my water station since I was RESPONSIBLE for it. But, I couldn’t let a runner suffer or die on the road, and the next runner might not appear for a long time, and might not be willing or able to help and…shoot what should I do?
We flagged down the next vehicle, a small truck traveling in the direction of the fallen runner. Although he was a complete stranger, I told him that a woman was down, and asked him if he could help. He took off so quickly, I didn’t have time to decide if I should leave Kaz alone at the water station and go with the truck.
Long story short, the truck driver found the fallen runner, a young, American teacher at the school named Liz (and to me, the girlfriend of Stuart, the saint who helped fix our shower this week so we could have hot water) unconscious on the road. He lifted her into his truck and took her to the clinic, probably saving her life. Liz later recalled weaving back and forth across the road once or twice and then waking up in the clinic. She was severely dehydrated and her blood sugar level was dangerously high.
After he was sure she was settled, the truck driver came back to tell me that she was going to be all right, but that she was alone and needed someone to join her at the clinic. Serendipitously, the next vehicle that passed contained Liz’s boyfriend, Stuart, who had finished the race and was wondering where Liz was. She was lagging far behind her usual running time, he said, and he was concerned. She should have passed water station #9 more than an hour ago. Very concerned, Stuart had asked one of the “Moms” who was helping set up food at the school to drive him back along the race route to see where Liz was. When he stopped at our station to ask if Liz had run by yet, I suddenly knew who the fallen runner was, and sent him to the clinic. With our collective, admittedly panicky Spanish, we managed to ask the “Mom” if she knew where the clinic was, and if she could take Stuart there.
All ended well. Stuart found Liz hooked up to an IV at the clinic, and after receiving the appropriate replenishments, she was released in time to join the afternoon festivities back at the school. They were able to get the name of the 14 year-old runner who reported Liz had gone down, and the name of the “Mom” whom Stuart grabbed to drive him around, but nobody seems to know who the truck driver was. I hope he surfaces again soon so we can thank him for his unexpected selflessness and extraordinary care for a stranger in need. There must be a special place in Heaven for people like him.
Motivating Students
After the festivities, Kaz and Alvaro (the outstanding artist) decided to check all the traps Dolly’s friends Jeff and Terry had set up in the forest earlier in the week. I went home. Dolly stopped by my house a couple of hours later to say the boys found some wildlife in the traps and Kaz was eagerly looking them up in the books in our office. It is projects like these that naturally motivate students to be proactive, to investigate, to discover, and to learn. I can tell you one thing for sure- Kaz would not be caught dead at his school in Maryland on a Saturday, and would probably not do a project that was not required. Here, he finds satisfaction and even joy in the activities and projects he does, regardless of whether the work is required or graded or not. What a lovely change this environment is for him!