by Lural Ramirez | Nov 30, 2020
The global pandemic and consequent closures of schools around the world has presented an unprecedented administrative and school leadership challenge. Only time will truly tell what the most appropriate approach will turn out to have been, but at Futuro Verde we are striving to stay true to the intentions of our founders and to the mission and vision that guides us as a school. With those founding principles at the forefront, we have added in a good deal of grit, determination and creativity to arrive upon our current programming models, all of which fall within the broader Futuro Verde Project: a non-profit association with the goal to create a community education organization consisting of three parts:
- Centro Educativo Futuro Verde: Private bilingual international school which is auto-financed by monthly school fees and which extends scholarships of some kind to at least 30% of the student body.
- Educación Interactiva Futuro Verde: Outreach to area rural public schools to provide academic enrichment programs through our volunteer and service learning program.
- Centro Recreativo Futuro Verde and Centro de Atención Integral (CAI) FV: Extra-curricular program open to all students of the region providing organized activities (sports, arts, music, language, etc.) and Integrated Educational Center designed to support students ages 3 to 12 years.
Our students in Centro Educativo Futuro Verde are currently working through a blended learning model, designed to meet the needs of all students, irrespective of their specific and individual circumstances and preferences. At this time, we are not operating any part of Educación Interactiva Futuro Verde. However, you can read more about our blended learning program as a school and our complimentary and optional programming through Centro Recreativo FV and CAI FV by accessing the latest updates on our website.
Futuro Verde Website: Blended Learning
During these difficult times we are all living, we remind our entire community of our love for you all, our sincere desire that you take all necessary precautions to keep yourself and your loved ones safe, and our hope that we will be able to see one another under more “normal” circumstances very soon!
by Angie Briceño | Jul 11, 2020
Over the past few weeks, we have all gotten to know our 12th grade, and 2nd generation International Baccalaureate students, through Tuesday’s social media posts “Portraits of a Graduate”.
2020 is a very different year for the 12th graders, where what was to be a last year of memories together in class has ended up being an isolated experience in each of their homes, working towards a common goal of obtaining the International Baccalaureate degree. What we can conclude from these “portraits’ is that Futuro Verde has been not only a portal of knowledge but also a family, for this group of students. The relationships and friendships they have established at Futuro Verde will be forever carried in their hearts. Futuro Verde has been an extremely important part of their lives and they have been important to the growth and evolution of Futuro Verde. Many of them have been with us since elementary school, others joined us at the beginning of high school. We have seen them grow as students and also as people. We have watched their trajectories and we can agree that today they are citizens of the world and are ready to go out and give the best of themselves and contribute to making our world a better place. We wish them all success!
by Lural Ramirez | May 6, 2020
As schools around the world transitioned to distance learning models in response to the novel Coronavirus pandemic, there have been milestones and moments that have been key, and as reported by the World Economic Forum on April 22, 2020, we have seen unprecedented global cooperation in response to the suffering and social-distancing efforts.
As the virus made its way to Latin America, Futuro Verde was weeks, and in some aspects years, ahead in our preparation for this required shift to online learning. The timeline below details our school’s response to this crisis and our preparedness efforts.
2014, over a period of months
Futuro Verde webmaster Khalida Lockheed spearheaded our application to Google to become a “Google For Education” school. Our application was accepted, giving us free, unlimited access to domain-specific @futuro-verde.org emails, Google For Education Apps like Gmail, Classroom, and the like. This step allowed all Futuro Verde board members, staff and students to have Futuro Verde emails and a controlled and safe shared domain for our IT needs.
How did this help us during the pandemic? All staff and students were already united under a common domain, which facilitated both more complex and collaborative online processes as well as an assurance that email server filters follow our students’ safeguarding protocols and policies.
2015, over a period of months
Futuro Verde webmaster Khalida Lockheed, in her dual role as webmaster and design manager, shifted our www.futuro-verde.org website to a content management system (WordPress), allowing for greater flexibility and collaboration.
How did this help us during the pandemic? Having the ability to quickly and easily link students and families to all of our online learning tools and resources aided in a smooth transition into a full online learning mode.
2016 school year
Secondary teachers began implementing the Google for Education Classroom app with more consistency starting in 2016. Students in upper secondary grades had become accustomed to having a parallel online platform which was initially used to document assignments and projects and to digitally receive student work for projects assigned.
This year as well, some preschool and primary teachers began to experiment with the Seesaw Platform, used then as a supplemental family communication tool.
How did this help us during the pandemic? As we shifted to online learning, Classroom and Seesaw became our main platforms for student online, at-home engagement and work. Our previous experience with both platforms made this new leap to larger use volume much more manageable and smooth.
2017-2019 school years
As Futuro Verde grew, we were able to acquire much needed, full-time support in IT and we began to purchase and systematically use several key databases, tools and programs that support student learning. Specifically, we acquired: Turnitin, a similarity detection tool to help students learn how not to plagiarize their work; EBSCO a database of reliable sources for information across a myriad of subjects and grade levels; Reading A to Z, a platform that provides independent level reading support for our pre-k and primary students; and IXL, a license we purchased for school-wide use to reinforce our students’ math abilities through an online platform personalized to their current needs and abilities and updated continually to meet their needs.
Additionally, from an administrative perspective, we purchased a school Zooom pro account in order to facilitate the confirmation of strategic university, governmental and private partnerships to benefit our students. And, perhaps most importantly, in 2019 we became a PTC member school.
How did this help us during the pandemic? Futuro Verde’s databases, tools and programs have been pillars in our instructional focus during online learning, shifting from the supplemental structures they once were to more integral and central tools for learning during our online program. Zoom Pro has allowed us to continue to effectively coordinate as staff and to maintain that high level of care and personalized attention our teachers and school are known for.
Via the listservs established by the PTC as a part of our membership status, PTC membership has meant that we have been kept at the forefront of the response by reputable international schools around the world. Furthermore, as I mentioned at the start of this article and as the World Economic Forum has confirmed, the unprecedented global cooperation between international and government schools has been invaluable to us at Futuro Verde. Our leadership team and governing body began receiving advice and updates from partner schools in China, then the rest of Asia, then the Middle East, Europe, Africa and now Latin and North America as the virus spread across the globe. The virus came to our continent last and we have benefited greatly from the lessons learned by our partner schools and we have modified resources eagerly shared with us by other schools who are weeks ahead of us in their response in order to best meet the needs of our unique student population. And please know that we have extended that same level of support in return, sharing our own best practice with other schools in the hopes that it might help them better weather this storm we are all in together.
This doesn’t mean we were perfectly prepared for everything though…
In the one day we took for teacher training on March 17th before immediately moving to online learning with students, we hurriedly got up to speed on Google Hangouts, for daily student check-in and accessibility for office hours with teachers throughout the day. We had always had access to this App as a part of our “Google For Education” status, but our first real use of the app coincided with the crisis. Luckily our amazing teachers are dedicated learners themselves and so they dove into this new challenge, and the others that have come, as we continue to innovate our approach and program as the weeks go by.
I sincerely hope this look back in time related to preparedness has helped further contextualize the value of investing in a high quality education for your child. Effective, coordinated efforts require time, in this case years, and they also require vision, commitment and determination. As Head of School, I am deeply appreciative for our fantastic staff who have contributed to our readiness for online learning, to our international school partners for their generosity and time, and, most importantly to our students and their families for their commitment to progressive, high-quality and future minded education on the Nicoya peninsula!
For more information on our specific programming, please visit our website which houses specific information and resources related to our online and distance learning program. And, stay tuned for new response to the crisis yet to come! The latest updates from our partner schools outside of Latin and North America is that most countries and schools are beginning to transition back to on-campus learning, with modifications and precautions new to all. So, if the pattern of this global crisis stays true, a whole new challenge awaits our community soon when Latin and North America also begin to transition back! If you know us well, you know we have been preparing for that for weeks now already…
by Angie Briceño | Mar 29, 2020
Futuro Verde has an amazing and unique bilingual program. As the language specialist at our school, I get to work with students in all stages of development of both Spanish and English, from pre-K to 12th grade. In addition to receiving instruction in both languages throughout the day, language development has several layers here at Futuro Verde. The base layer that all students receive is a course in which they study multilingual and multicultural themes. This course, called Comparative Language Study at the elementary level and World Languages for our middle-schoolers, also helps students develop important language-learning strategies such as identifying cognates (words that sound or look the same in two or more languages), or using prefixes to infer meaning. The second layer of our language development program involves supporting specific groups of students who could benefit from extra instruction in either Spanish or English.
So what do both components of our bilingual program look like during online learning?
Delivering language support virtually can be a challenge, but we are finding ways to help language learners at all levels! Our Comparative Language Study course continues with online mini-lessons that I record myself teaching (for the younger grades) and assign independent work for (in the case of upper elementary). I have also been working with CREW teachers and other specialist teachers to have instructions for all assignments translated so that students and families understand how to complete each task. Additionally, we have provided video supports and modified assignments as added help for certain grade levels and assignments, not only to explain instructions more thoroughly or to guide students in completing certain tasks, but also to adapt the assignments to the needs of language learners. Videos are key here, so that we can convey meaning and content through gestures, images, objects, etc.
Parents, please feel free to reach out if your child is having difficulty understanding their assignments at anika@futuro-verde.org.
Online Special Education Support
by Alannah Anglin
Futuro Verde is lucky to have a multicultural and multilingual student population. The Support Team focuses on serving the population in a multidisciplinary manner, guiding and supporting students from preschool through twelfth grade through three different but related approaches: social, emotional and academic. Since our learning has taken a temporary turn towards virtual learning, the team has taken on the task of continuing to support students, working together with both teachers and parents. We have taken the following initiatives:
Create set schedules for online learning, seeking to bring balance, well-being, family cohesion and academic structure to homes.
Proposed Online Learning Schedule for PreK – 2nd grade
Proposed Online Learning Schedule for 3rd – 6th grade
Create virtual support ¨chats¨ in Seesaw or Hangouts, where we seek to maintain immediate communication with students and parents or guardians who wish to do so; providing guidance and answering any questions about the assigned activities.
Keep in touch with parents about their children’s progress, making sure to provide the support required by the students to facilitate the understanding and performance of the activities.
We have continued to give the Writing and Reading Workshops, taking into account the needs and objectives of each individual student.
by Stuart Millar, IB coordinator | Nov 1, 2019
October is a busy month in the International Baccalaureate calendar for schools on a November exam schedule such as Futuro Verde. Grades for internal evaluations have to be submitted, along with the required supporting materials. Internal evaluations come in different forms: individual orals about works of literature; interactive or group orals; research projects in Business Management, Biology, and Math; the Visual Arts exhibition; and musical creating and performing. This year our students have composed music, performed, exhibited their works of art and undertaken research projects about the correlation between sports activity and academic achievement, whether a local hotel should target the holistic wellness segment of the hospitality industry, and to determine if there is a correlation between cases of Tuberculosis and the Human Development Index (HDI) in Europe. Internal evaluations are assessed by Futuro Verde teachers according to IB criteria, with samples of assessed student work being sent to the IB organization for moderation. This is how the IB organization assures that students from different schools are assessed as fairly and equally as possible.
The variety of projects that our students undertake and the support they receive is in no small part due to the qualifications, expertise, and experience of our teachers at Futuro Verde. This is just one of the key strengths and unique selling points of Futuro Verde compared to other institutions in the area. Our teachers are specialists, all of them possessing degrees in their areas of knowledge, be those in early childhood education, primary education, special education, science, math, business, and languages, etc. Many hold advanced degrees, sometimes in more than one area of specialty, and a high proportion has earned masters degrees in education. Add to that the experience they bring from all over the world and our students have a wealth of knowledge and experience to draw from.
Our teachers are authentic lifelong learners and Futuro Verde supports all of them to be so. IB requires that teachers giving instruction in diploma program subjects have attended Category 1 workshops, which are either face-to-face or online. Going one step further, we have just registered our teachers for multiple advanced Category 2 and 3 workshops which will take place over the next six months. In September we were visited by Dr. Mia Sosa-Provencio and her team from the University of New Mexico (USA) as they worked with all our teachers from preschool to 12th grade to develop collaborative classroom strategies featuring Latin American narratives of struggle and resilience amid structural oppression. Every year we hold the Bilingual Holistic Sustainable Educational Conference and this year we were lucky enough to have David Rogers, Executive Director for Dual Language Education of New Mexico, as our keynote speaker. The success of BHS this year led to David inviting and sponsoring our teachers, by waiving the registration fee, to attend La Cosecha conference in New Mexico, USA. We are excited about all that our attendees are going to learn and bring back with them!
by Katie Chiaverini | Oct 31, 2019
Futuro Verde is very excited to begin implementing a new curricular support which is a learning platform for math called IXL. The IXL program will be used by students across all the grades and can also be accessed online at home. With thousands of skills that match what we’re learning, as well as insights into student progress, IXL is a great resource to help your child excel.
The IXL math program is made up of four main components that are integrated throughout the program to better personalize learning for each and every student: Comprehensive Curriculum, Personalized Guidance, Actionable Analytics, and Continuous Diagnostic. The program provides over 8,000 skills to support grade level objectives and gives instant feedback to students on their work. Students find it very engaging and motivating as it provides incentives connected to student achievement. Another very important aspect is that the questions adapt as the student answers correctly or incorrectly to allow them success at the appropriate level.
There are many different ways that parents can support their children at home with the IXL program. Parents can encourage their children to visit the personalized “Recommendations wall” within IXL for helpful review or new challenges, as they are targeted specifically for each student! Parents can also sign in to their child’s account and click on Analytics to see what they’ve been working on and check their progress. With built in incentives and rewards, families can help celebrate student accomplishments when a new goal is reached.
On October 31, Futuro Verde provided a parent workshop on how to help support their children at home with the IXL program. We were so glad to have parents as learners and show an interest in their child’s academic growth. If any parents would like to know more about the IXL program or how to help their child at home but missed the workshop, feel free to email Katie@futuro-verde.org for more information.
