Category: Sharing

At Monteverde Friends School, we are always on the look-out for creative ways to support our students’ spiritual growth and learning Quaker values.  In a 6-week minicourse about podcasting, students partnered with the fabulous Mari Wadsworth at Monteverde FM Community Radio to:

• Design questionnaires to learn about the core Quaker values, known as the “SPICES”: Simplicity, Peace, Integrity, Community, Equality and Stewardship
• Interview selected community members, such as Sue Trostle, Yuri Suarez (long-time parent and the school’s Sub-Director of Administration) and Rick Juliusson (Co-Director and parent)
• Edit the interviews and group into content areas to create a podcast

The end results include a deeper appreciation and wrestling with values for the students (and the interviewees!), technical understanding about podcasts, experience in the fine art of interviewing, connection with community members, and…

Thank you to Mari and Monteverde FM, our students, and our interviewees for this truly interesting and informative exploration of values.

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December 1 is much more than the beginning of Christmas month (though we will be going to the annual Light Up parade, “Monteverde Brilla”, tonight) – it’s the day we celebrate perhaps THE pivotal moment in Costa Rican history.  68 years ago today, the new government abolished the army, and started investing that money in education, health care, and ultimately Peace.  It’s one of the main reasons our founding Quakers moved to Monteverde in 1951 (don’t forget about our 65th Anniversary Celebration and Reunion in March!), and continues to be one of the key reasons Costa Rica is a thriving, Peaceful place to live.

Our celebration this year lasted almost all morning.  Carlos and Laura explained the history and importance of the abolition.  We sang songs of Peace (including the perennial favorite “Turn the World Around”).  Then they broke into 7 groups, led by grade 12 students.  Each group was given a different conflict situation (stealing a snack, coming late to class…), and developed a skit of a bad way then a good way to deal with it.

As with everything our teachers organize, this morning was full of laughter, interest, earnest discussion and energy.  Our students are actively learning and living the principles of Peace and non-violent communication, and feel blessed to live in a country founded on those same values.

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As Hurricane Otto prepares to hit our coast within the next few hours, I sit in my mountain-top home feeling thankful for so many things.  We live in a country that has the infrastructure and commitment to take care of each other during and after this storm, which we pray will be minimal.  When the first big winds knocked over three huge trees along the road to the school two days ago, volunteers came out early in the morning to help.  On my way to school my heart was warmed to see one of our parents (Tim Waring), one of our long-term community members (Richard Trostle), and a team of men from the Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve with hatchets and chainsaws clearing the road.  This is the spirit of Monteverde, and of Costa Rica, that makes me not scared of the next few days of high winds and torrential rains.

We have opened our Meeting House as an emergency shelter, but I doubt it will be needed.  Any families who feel their own homes are not safe are much more likely to find a warm welcome with neighbours and family nearby – we are a community of open doors.

At the same time as we think about this storm, we are also sending warm loving thoughts to our extended community in the US and beyond.  Many of you are gathering today with loved ones to give thanks, as are we, and we hold you in our hearts.  The annual appeal letters that you may have recently received were joyfully decorated by our students who deeply feel gratitude for donor support that makes it possible for over half our students to study at MFS.  The whole community of meeting members, teachers and parents came together to hand-write notes at the tops of the letters, again in the true spirit of appreciation.  These were not just request for financial support – they were a global send-out of love and thanksgiving.

Of course, we are thankful for so much more than just financial contributions.  We continue to have volunteers and interns come to enrichen our learning environment.  Visitors and tour groups bring their fresh eyes and energy.  Parents entrust us with their Study Abroad students, and (starting in January) our very first Gap Year students.  I was hosted and warmly welcomed by so many of you on my recent trip to the US.  Registrations for the 65th Anniversary Celebration and Reunion are building excitement for this March 9-12 gathering.  Even just reading and sharing these blogs and facebook posts helps us grow.

So, as you keep us – and our friends in higher-risk areas along the coast – in your prayers for the next few Hurricane Otto days, please know that we feel strong and ready.  Monteverde knows how to come together to support each other, and we grateful for the many ways that you are all part of that web of support.

If you’re looking for an internship in Costa Rica (or anywhere), the students at the University for Peace could teach you a thing or two. I was at their internship fair because the intern we hosted from them last year – Erika Graczyk, pictured above – was so wonderful that we ended up hiring her as our Social Studies teacher this year.  If she’s an example of their quality of students, we want more of them!

Here’s what they did that made my 3-hour drive off the mountain worthwhile.  They didn’t just come to my table to sniff out internship possibilities (which we do have!)  They showed a genuine interest in learning about our school, and even about me.  Even if they didn’t think our rural mountain-top school was the right fit for them, they saw value in learning something new, and making a real connection with a new person.  They made eye contact, gave me their 100% attention and interest, and shook my hand.  They didn’t sell me with their resumes and accomplishments, but with the way they treat people and show interest in the world.

Each time I watched them move on to the next table and treat that person with the same respect and genuine curiosity, I thought, “I hope they apply for our school – they would make a great contribution.”  Every one of them got the job without even asking.

Like most organizations, we have internship openings for only a few good young people to join us for a work-learn opportunity.  And I can honestly say that the students of UPEACE are exactly the type of people we would welcome to our community.

I wrote a recent blog post about the way our school’s graduates live and make a difference in the world.  How encouraging to visit another school whose students are a living testimony to the values we want to see in the world.  Thank you, UPEACE.

Leading up to our 65th Anniversary celebration next March, here is a look at the history of the founding of our school, as recorded by Mary Mendenhall in the Monteverde Jubilee Family Album)

When everyone was situated in some kind of temporary housing in Monteverede the largest house, where the Dairy Plant now stands, was fixed up as a meeting-school house and a community center.  Partitions were removed to make one large room.  The outside walls were taken off the kitchen, leaving an open-air porch with an opening into the larger room, which gave it more air and light.

Elwood and Ruth Mendenhall unpacked their dining room table for a place for the older children to work.  A packing box was made into a supply cupboard.  The smaller children “made do” with the plank benches used for meeting.  A box supper was held to get money to buy a water bucket, wash pan, blackboard paint, etc.  That is some indication of our primitive accommodations.

The new school year started in March 1952.  It was a wonderful time to be establishing a school.  Everything was new and exciting: the climate, the mountains, the culture, and the never-ending discoveries, for instance a drop of water in a tequiqui leaf would run around like mercury if tilted, or could even be funneled into ones mouth.  Or seeing a buzzard circling above the hill behind the schoolhouse, the curious children ran up at recess to find only a small dead toad.  Now how, from such a height, did the buzzard know it was there?  The whole setting fostered one of the goals of the school: to maintain the natural eagerness to learn which is typical of small children but is often lost in school regimens.

Because of several grades in the same room, class periods were held around a table, while pupils not in class studied at their desks.  The latter required real concentration.  Efforts were made to meet the individual needs of each child.  Older children, or any who understood a problem were allowed to help a child when needed.  When a teacher was absent, if we did not have a substitute, older children who had their word done, filled in.

Reports twice a year were written out by the teachers in an effort to report each child’s progress rather than comparing him to others as in a letter or figure reports.  As little home work as possible was assigned, as most of it could be done in the study periods and time to be a part of one’s family after school seemed important.

Rick’s note: It interests me how many of those early traditions/characteristics are still central to our school 65 years later.  Mixed grade classrooms, minimizing competition/comparison between students, peer tutoring, integrating the natural world into lessons, and most importantly, maintaining “the natural eagerness to learn.”  If only (my children bemoan) we still kept a light homework load these days…