Estimados padres y profesores de Futuro Verde,

Les escribo después de unos meses como director de la escuela para compartir con todos algunos pensamientos sobre el futuro y después de pasar más de 100 horas en diálogo recopilando comentarios, ideas e inquietudes de estudiantes, padres y profesores.

Quiero compartir algunas impresiones y reflexiones iniciales, y esbozar un borrador de lo que veo como el camino hacia nuestro maravilloso futuro, basado en estos diálogos y conversaciones.

Los comentarios provienen de todos nuestros alumnos de 7º a 12º grado, más de 100 padres que participaron en los diálogos con el director de la escuela y todo nuestro cuerpo docente (con quienes me reuní individualmente durante una hora y en varios grupos pequeños y configuraciones de grupo completo durante más de 30 horas).

¡Estos representan sus ideas, inquietudes y pensamientos y lo que hace que nuestra escuela sea excelente, y lo que debemos hacer para mejorarla aún más!

Contamos con un fuerte liderazgo y equipo de apoyo. Profesional, comprometida y eficaz. Estoy emocionado de trabajar con ellos en apoyo del trabajo educativo de los maestros.

¡Tenemos una fuerte visión de posibilidades, pero tenemos trabajo que hacer para vivirla plenamente! Los desafíos de la pandemia y las restricciones financieras han tenido un impacto significativo y apenas estamos comenzando a superarlos. Necesitamos recuperar nuestro encanto en nuestra cultura y en nuestro mundo académico. Necesitamos volver a nuestras fortalezas y oportunidades históricas, que son muchas.

Veo niños motivados aprendiendo en muchas aulas. Veo un aprendizaje emocionante y maestros comprometidos en la mayoría de las aulas.

La cultura de nuestra escuela es feliz, y el amor y el cariño se ven en todas partes: en nuestros niños, en nuestros maestros y en nuestro personal de apoyo. ¡Esto es algo muy difícil de hacer bien y somos muy fuertes en este sentido!

Necesitamos fortalecer nuestros programas académicos y nuestra cultura de aprendizaje. Necesitamos alinear todo el colegio con el plan de estudios del IB: fortalecer el programa del Diploma y adoptar por completo el MYP (grados 6 a 9) y el PYP (grados 1 a 5) y convertirnos en un colegio IB de pleno. Nuestra estrategia de mejora académica inicial se centrará en 3 áreas centrales: a) Alfabetización en todo el plan de estudios, b) Mejorar nuestras prácticas de evaluación, c) Desarrollar un programa de educación al aire libre, excursiones y expediciones que aproveche al máximo lo que Costa Rica y Mesoamérica tienen para ofrecer.

Necesitamos construir buques insignia, cosas en las que podamos ser realmente extraordinarios, dado nuestro contexto especial de selva y playa en Centroamérica. Las áreas obvias son educación ambiental, educación azul (océano), aprendizaje al aire libre, una secuencia de ciencias que se alinea mejor con los requisitos universitarios, nuestro programa bilingüe, cursos que profundizan en la cultura, geografía y diversidad biológica costarricense y mesoamericana.

Necesitamos modernizar nuestras aulas: mejorar las condiciones térmicas, hacerlas más luminosas, instalar capacidad multimedia, tener libros de texto para dar una mejor estructura y organización a nuestro plan de estudios. Hemos comenzado este proceso este verano, por ejemplo, instalando capacidad multimedia, agregando más ventiladores y comprando libros de texto para muchas de nuestras aulas. ¡Será posible un mayor desarrollo con nuestro campus ampliado, ya que pronto agregaremos 1.5 hectáreas, más del doble de nuestro tamaño!

Necesitamos invertir más en nuestra facultad para fortalecer sus habilidades y conocimientos de enseñanza y para alinear completamente nuestro plan de estudios con el programa IB.

Debemos invertir significativamente en nuestro campus: expandir los espacios verdes, mejorar la tecnología educativa en nuestras aulas y espacios de reunión, construir estructuras escolares internacionales adicionales, como un auditorio/gimnasio techado para 500 personas, un centro de estudiantes, un laboratorio de ciencias primarias, una cafetería de tamaño completo , entre otros. Ya estamos comprometidos a invertir en nuestro laboratorio de ciencias de secundaria, expandir nuestro espacio de aula de arte, instalar capacidad multimedia en todo nuestro aula de secundaria y algunos espacios de reunión en toda la escuela. Ya estamos mejorando nuestros espacios de educación física con nuestro nuevo acuerdo ampliado con Torogoz (acceso completo de 8 a 3 p. m.), restaurando nuestra cancha de fútbol junior, instalando una nueva cancha de voleibol de arena y mejorando nuestros espacios de juegos de Prepa y Primaria, y pronto un campus ampliado con 1.5 hectáreas adicionales.

Necesitamos embellecer nuestro campus. Estamos limpiando y resembrando nuestros espacios verdes y jardines para aprovechar mejor nuestros árboles nativos y la vegetación natural. ¡Vendrán más durante el año con nuestro niños haciéndose cargo de jardines y arboledas bajo su cuido!

Necesitamos mejorar nuestra comunicación con los padres, entre profesores y estudiantes y con la comunidad. ¡Verá nuevos grupos de WhatsApp, sincronización mejorada en nuestras comunicaciones de Facebook e Instagram y correo electrónico, y más reuniones en persona en el campus próximamente!

Debemos involucrar más a nuestros padres en el campus, para apoyar nuestros proyectos de mejora del campus, para celebrar el aprendizaje de nuestros hijos. Pronto escuchará sobre nuestro programa de padres representantes de grado, nuestros comités de padres restablecidos y actividades escolares mensuales que incluyen la participación de los padres.

Más allá de lo anterior, debemos reconstruir una cultura de reto, entusiasmo y excelencia donde los estudiantes se sientan motivados y empujados, las expectativas de aprendizaje sean altas y​ ​los niños sean muy apoyados y apreciados. Necesitamos usar la naturaleza más como un espacio de aprendizaje. ¡Necesitamos más excursiones y expediciones! Y más horas dedicadas al aprendizaje en nuestros hermosos bosques cercanos y hábitats de playa.

Confío en que, con el apoyo de los padres y los estudiantes, nuestra facultad avanzará con el impulso de mejora y fortalecimiento de nuestra escuela, que en los próximos años nos llevará a convertirnos en una escuela internacional modelo para nuestra región. Animo a los padres y profesores a compartir sus pensamientos, reflexiones e inquietudes individualmente conmigo para que podamos continuar la conversación sobre el futuro de nuestra escuela.

¡Estoy emocionado de ser parte de Futuro Verde y espero con ansias el comienzo de ​este año 2023-24, nuestro 15 aniversario! ¡Nos vemos el primer día de clases!

Con esperanza siempre,
.
.
Dear F​uturo ​V​erde ​Parents and Faculty​,

I write ​to you ​after ​a few months ​as Head of School​ to share with all some thoughts​ about the future, ​and after spending over 100 hours in dialogue collecting feedback​, ideas, and concerns​ from students, parents and faculty​.

​I ​want to share ​​some initial impressions and reflections​, and outline a draft of what I see as the path for our awesome future​, based on these dialogues and conversations.

The feedback comes from our entire ​7​-12th graders, over 100 parents who participated in the dialogues with the Head of School, and our entire faculty body​ (with whom I met individually for an hour and in various small groups and whole group configurations for over 30 hours). These represent your ideas, concerns and thoughts and what makes our school great, and what we need to do to improve it even more!

We have a s​trong ​leadership and support team. Professional, committed and effective. I am excited to work with them in support of the teachers’ educational work.

We have a strong vision of possibilities, but have work to do to live it fully! The challenges of the pandemic and financial ​contraints​ have had a significant impact​, and we are just starting to get over them​. We need to regain our mojo in our culture, ​and in ​our academics​. We need ​return to our ​historic ​strengths and opportunities​, which are many.​

I see motivated children learning​ in many classrooms.​ ​I see ​exciting learning, and committed teachers​ in most classrooms.

Our school’s culture is happy, and love and caring are seen everywhere – in our kids, in our teachers and in our support staff. This is a very hard thing to get right and we are very strong in this respect!

​We need to strengthen our academics and our learning culture. We need to align the entire school to the IB curriculum – strengthen the Diploma program and fully adopt MYP ​(grades 6-9th) ​and PYP​ (grades 1-5th) and become a full-fledged IB school​. ​Our initial academic improvement strategy will focus in 3 core ares: a) Literacy across the curriculum, b) Improving our Assessment practices, c) Developing a model outdoor, fieldtrip and expeditions program that takes full advantage of what Costa Rica and Meso-America have to offer. ​

​We need to build flagships – things we can be really good at​, ​given our special jungle-beach, Central American context. Obvious areas are environmental education, blue (ocean) education, outdoor learning, a science sequence that aligns better to college requirements, ​our bilingual program, ​courses that dive deeply into Costarican and ​M​esoamerican culture and geograph​y​ and biological diversity.

​We need to modernize our classrooms – improve the thermal conditions, make them brighter, install multimedia capacity, have textbooks to give better structure and organization to our curriculum. We have begun this process this summer, for example installing multimedia capacity, adding more fans, and purchasing textbooks for many of our classrooms. Further development will be possible with our expanded campus, as we will soon add 1.5 hectares of land, more than doubling our size!

​We need to invest more in our faculty to strengthen their ​teaching ​skills and knowledge and ​to ​fully align our curriculum to the IB program.

​We must invest significantly in our campus – expand green spaces, edtech our classrooms​ and meeting spaces​, build additional international school ​structures ​such as a full ​500​ people auditorium/roofed gym, a student center, a primary ​science ​lab, a full size cafeteria, ​among others. We are already committed to investing in our secondary science lab, expanding our Art classroom space, installing multimedia capacity in our entire secondary classroom and some schoolwide meeting spaces.

We are already improving our physical education spaces with our new expanded agreement with Torogoz (full access 8-3 pm), resodding our junior soccer field, installing a new sand volleyball court and upgrading our Prepa and Primary playground spaces​, and soon an expanded campus with 1.5 additional hectares.​​

We need to beautify our campus. We are cleaning up and replanting our green spaces and gardens to take better advantage of our native trees and natural vegetation. More will be coming during the year as the kids adopt and and plant green spaces and learn gardening!

We need to improve our communications with parents, between faculty and students and with the community. You will see new whatsapp groups, improved syncing across our facebook and instagram and email communications, and more on campus in-person meetings coming soon!

We must engage our parents more on campus – to support our campus improvement projects, to celebrate our children’s learning, and to fully incorporate parent ideas, energy and commitments. Soon you will hear about our parent grade representative program, our reestablished parent committees, and monthly schoolwide activities that include parent involvement.

​Beyond the above ​we must rebuild a culture of challenge​, excitement​ and excellence where students feel ​motivated and ​pushed, expectations for learning are high, and children are highly supported and loved. We need to use nature ​more ​as a learning space​. We need to have more fieldtrips and expeditions! ​And mo​re hours spent learning in our beautiful ​nearby ​forest and beach habitats.

​I am confident that with parent and student support, our faculty will move forward with our school’s strengthening and enhancement drive, which over the next few years, will lead us to become a model international school for our region. I encourage parents and faculty to share their thoughts – reflections – concerns individually with me so that we may continue the conversation about our school’s future.

​I am excited to be part of Futuro Verde and look forward to this 2023-24 year, our 15th year anniversary!​ See you all on the first day of school!

With hope always,

Dr G.

Teacher Appreciation Day

Teachers at Futuro Verde are a small community of kind and loving humans committed to education, and are always supporting each other and helping each other out. This year, for the first time, we celebrated Teacher Appreciation Day and Thanksgiving together and we shifted the focus from the American tradition of Thanksgiving, to show love and appreciation for our staff. We did one personal reunion with each group and their crew teacher to work on thanksgiving and one big event with the school to celebrate teachers. The outcome was very positive for students and teachers.

During previous years, Futuro Verde used to focus more on Thanksgiving day and appreciate teachers along with every other positive aspect in life, while the students would enjoy the wonderful meals prepared for the occasion. However, this year the committee focused on doing something for teacher appreciation and we thought about the student’s doing presentations for the teachers, such as dances, poems and music recitals. While I went around asking teachers what they would like to do for teachers day, they mentioned that they wanted to relax and be able to enjoy the event. This comment from the kindergarten teachers shifted my idea into doing something where teachers could be involved and really enjoy it. Consequently, I came up with the idea of creating a teachers’ game where students participated as organizers and audience.

The day started with administration sending out a video of the teachers since the first day and giving out presents for each teacher. Through out the day food were coming into the teachers office to celebrate our bid day. Student’s were giving presents and hugs to their teachers too. The first hour of the event was dedicated for thanksgiving through an intimate activity with each group, their crew teacher and a guest teacher. During this hour, students did activities to show their appreciation about diverse aspects of life, such as family, friends, school and others. This was an opportunity for students to reflect about their lives and share their appreciation to others. In the next hour we did the Teacher’s game, where teachers previously signed up for specific games that they wanted to play, such as musical chairs, sign if you know it, sack race and tuck of war. The bigger student’s were involved in the organization: IB student’s took care and entertained kindergarten students, 10th grade set up the games and were judges, 9th grade helped organized all the sitting arrangements for the audience and 8th and 7th grade helped putting all the resources back and cleaning after the event.

The event was a complete success. The students laugh and enjoy cheering for their teachers, watching their teachers having fun and being children for one hour. The teachers gave great feedback, they were able to participate in games where they actually wanted and got prices if they won. Moreover, through the event administrators were giving out ruffle prices involving a range of relaxing experiences. Many teachers were so happy and please that they ask for the event to become an annual tradition. The day really felt as an appreciation day for teacher from beginning to end and made us deeply feel appreciated by administration and students.

More importantly, it made us feel like we belong to a friendly and loving community. 

The Respect-Love-Peace arts festival was held on Wednesday, December 14. 

The RAP event was on the playground with an outdoor amphitheater, so students were encouraged to bring picnic-style tablecloths to enjoy the performances in comfort. This is an activity that will be attended by the entire Futuro Verde community of parents, students and staff, in order to enjoy the students’ end-of-year artistic presentations before leaving for vacation.

Each grade has prepared, together with their Crew Teacher, a special presentation, including choreography, poetry, drama and music by our talented student body. Some students will participate with solo, duo and trio presentations, performing live songs that they have been preparing with great care.

For this, the RAP committee is especially grateful to the Music and Theater department for the guidance and preparation of our students in the area of stage talent. 

Performances will be separated by a lunch period from 11:30 to 12:30, and will continue until dismissal time. 

We remind you to bring sun and insect protection, and comfortable clothing as this will be an outdoor event, taking advantage of the beautiful summer weather ahead.

The five-year evaluation is a formal assessment conducted by the International Baccalaureate Organization (IB) every five years in all IB schools around the world. The main objective is to verify that IB programs are being developed correctly and according to IB program standards and practices. The evaluation process is described by the IB as “an opportunity to pause, to reflect on what is working and what deserves further attention,” to look at the functioning of the school as a whole, “to see how the school is doing. The five-year evaluation allows for a reassessment of the school’s internal processes, “reconnecting with the school community” and refocusing on the mission of Futuro Verde, which is “to foster students to be reflective learners who, through inquiry and critical thinking, develop the knowledge necessary to address global issues related to social justice, intercultural relations and the environment.”

The program evaluation requires the preparation of the school for a preliminary review of documents, which include compliance with the school’s mission/vision, school strategy, admissions policies, inclusion policies, behavioral policies, as well as all IB curricula taught at the school, among others. Following the preliminary review, the school must complete a self-evaluation questionnaire which is an exhaustive and very detailed process of reflection by all members of the community on the concrete applications of the program and an action plan for the development of measures that need improvement. At the end of these two stages the IB sends its delegates to visit the school to get a clearer idea of how the IB program is working in the school context. During this evaluation process everyone involved in the IB program: parents, students and teachers must be willing to reflect on what it means to be part of the IB world, demonstrate knowledge of how the program works and show a strong commitment to student learning through the IB curriculum.

For my part, this is an enriching process that, by encouraging us to reflect on what we have been working on for the past 5 years, will help us to improve. Therefore, I feel very satisfied to have the opportunity to lead the process, because from this role I have the possibility to provide guidance and support to colleagues, students and parents, solving their doubts or needs regarding the immersion or progress in the IB program.