Going to School!

Colegio Adventista Ebenezer

On Thursday, I had the opportunity to go to school with Natasha, Pastor Carlos' daughter.  A frined, Brianna, from Louisianna went with me.  This is a private Christian school in Hato Mayor.  In the Dominican Republic the students go to school half of the day.  Natasha happens to be in the morning group.  School starts at 8AM and they are finished by 12:30PM. 

A picture of the school building before the students arrive.

  

This is where the students gather for prayer each day.  You can see the doors to the classrooms along the walls on either side.  On Thursday, they had a special activity.  Schools from other communities attended.  It started raining during the program and it was so loud we couldn't hear anything!

A classroom before the students arrive.



The teacher's desk and chalkboard.

All or at least most of the posters in the school are hand-made by students or teachers.  This one is about photosynthesis.



Each morning, the students gather outside and line up with their class.  They raise the flag, sing the national anthem and pray before entering the school.  (Before the students arrive, the teachers gather together in one of the classrooms as well to pray, read the Bible, worship and prepare themselves for the day.)

The students pray and sing in their individual classrooms before the academic lessons begin.

I can't imagine teaching without a computer or a copy machines!  This is Spanish Class.  They are working on their grammar.  The teacher writes the exercises on the board.  The students copy what the teacher writes in their notebooks They write the exercises in pen and the answers in pencil.  It's time consuming for sure!

 





As the students finish, they raise their hand.  The teacher checks their work one at a time.


 

When they finish with the lesson, they record their homework exercises.





This was the second class of the day - Informatica.  It's like a technology class.  There's not a whole lot of technology in this school.  This teacher had the students get in small groups and do a word search, looking for words that you would find on the internet:  Outlook, Netscape, Chat, Yahoo were some of the words on the list.

Around 10:00 we had "snack time!"  This is a little cafeteria where students can buy juice, crackers, cookies and other snacks.

Briana made a friend!

You can see the volleyball court in the distance.  This is where they have Physical Education.  The girls are allowed to wear pants once a week - the day they have Phy-Ed.

There was a special assembly while we were there.  The "seniors" are those in red uniforms.  They led the study body in skits and songs.  I think there were 5 or 6 schools represented.

Then there was a spelling bee.  These are the contestants.

Cuaderno means notebook in Spanish.

The assembly ended with a skit.  The students were getting restless and anxious to get home for lunch!

That was our day at school.  I would have a hard time teaching in this school.  After teaching with computers, worksheets and SMART boards, I think I would get very frustrated with the limited resources.  The cement walls, tin roof and windows opening to the large room, also allowed for a lot of background noise and distractions.  I imagine it would be challenging to keep students' attention, but maybe they are used to it?! 

They have textbooks/workbooks for some of their classes.  I was able to flip through a science book, but I did not see a library in the school.

I think this is one of the better schools in town.  I wonder what the public schools are like.