We are volunteering at the Centro de Educacion Creativo or Cloud Forest School a prekinder to 11th grade private bilingual school. The campus is beautiful and has a large swath of protected rainforest. Dave and I are alternating volunteer days and on the days we have our kids we spend a few hours a day with our kids at the school. On my days with T and C we help out in the preK room and do recess with them. In the afternoon we play at home or go into town. When Dave has them on Tues and Thurs they help out with the garden and school trails with Milton, who runs the campus. On our volunteer days we help with tutoring, I do some development work, and we help Milton with reforestation projects or garden work. The other volunteers range from 19 to 27 but most are either in college or taking a gap year. The older ones who are here for at least 3 months help with a specific classroom. The folks here are all very nice and welcome the volunteers gratefully. The students are almost all Ticos and 65% of them are on scholarship. All the classes are taught in english after 3rd grade except high school history and social studies. They operate on a shoestring budget but do it quite well. There library is very lacking so they always welcome donations from the states of books and school supplies.
The kids are generally more wild than schools we are used to in the states but are lots of fun. I went with a class to climb a massive strangler fig tree this morning, the kids went at least 100 feet up!! That would never fly at home would it!! We´ve seen sloths, toucans, coati mundi and white faced monkeys on campus. Very cool.
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