16 Incredible Girls and their Incredible Teachers and Mentors...

We were a few of the fortunate parents who had the opportunity to share this amazing week with TTS19, and experience Guayaquil, Ecuador and the Galapagos Islands....

16 incredible girls (but I think we all knew that already!) and 4 incredible teachers who all want our girls to have a life-changing experience...and I believe they all are!

One week with them in Galapagos definitely changed mine...

I am sending my photos to Jennifer for approval (I know how fantastic any photo is, and apologize in advance for poor picture-taking, and for not getting individual pictures of everyone as we were on a different boat and didn't get to see them all the time)

Please email or call me and I'd be happy to share my trip with you....bontonbk@optonline.net

Hugs to all of you from you daughters ( I hugged them ALL before I left!),

Warm regards, Bonnie ( Katie's mom)

A Rich Cultural Experience

The flute, the fiddle, and the guitar echoed throughout the community center combining into one joyous melody. The upbeat music lifted everyone's spirits and bodies into a dance. The children skipped and twirled around the room to the beat of the drum and the sound of the singing voices. We danced around the table in the middle of the room that held the offering of food the community had gifted to us: a large bowl of potatoes, ava beans, corn, and Qui (guinea pig, which is a delicacy throughout Ecuador). This Despedida (goodbye ceremony) was a gift to us from the bottom of their hearts. The people of the community celebrated our presence in their homes, acknowledged our work, and wished us on our way.

The past week we had the opportunity of getting to know a different culture, a different people, and a different way of life in a very intimate way. In staying in the homes of people from this close knit community in the highlands of Ecuador our hearts and our eyes were opened. They were opened to dirt floors, wooden beds, cold showers, different languages--Quichua and Spanish-- and the love of the children and families of the community.

The last two days of our week long stay we participated in a Minga, a community work party-as the girls refer to it. Mingas happen once or twice every month in many communities throughout Ecuador. It is a time for the community to come together and work on a project that needs to get done with the many hands involved. We were able to lend more hands as we helped to re-tile the roof of the community preschool. Friday morning we worked with the women of the village to remove the tiles and clean them. Saturday lasted longer, and the entire roof was rebuilt by the many men sawing, hammering, and re-tiling. Although we did not join them on the roof, we were a huge help in passing tiles, wood, and other materials in order to get the job done. At one point they decided they needed more wood and sent some men up into the forest to cut down a eucalyptus tree. The men worked fast and efficiently and by the afternoon the roof was done, now ready to withstand another twenty years.

After the roof had been finished we gathered in the community center building to eat, dance, sing, and say our goodbyes. We presented the community with a song in Quichua, speeches from every girl to each individual family, and even a stomp dance that I taught the girls which I learned on my semester as a student. They learned the dance in a short amount of time and performed it incredibly, not only once, but four times as the people loved it so much. We were gifted by the members of the community as well with speeches, hugs, and we all partook in a final dance outside before piling into our truck.

Our past week was a gift and a learning experience. The girls did an amazing job. They fully immersed themselves in their families and soaked up the experience. The Minga and Despedida were great opportunities to interact closely with the members of the community and participate in such a special ceremony and offering. We were impacted greatly by the community and parted ways with heart-filled joy and many memories.

As we continue to travel on throughout the many places of South America we will take this rich experience with us wherever we go.

With Love and Gratitude,

Phoebe

Travelin' On

Hello friends and families!

It is crazy how fast time flies with The Traveling School. A part of me feels like we just arrived in Ecuador and a part of me feels like we have been here forever. There is definitely that part of me that feels like I never left as well.

I love this country. The people, the culture, the music, the smells. Ecuador brings me home to a place inside of me that feels at home. Throughout the past month we have had incredible new experiences and each day brings us closer to one another. Our travels, classes, and experiences make the long lasting memories.

Classes have been going smoothly with somewhat of a sporadic schedule-very familiar of life at TTS. In Beginning Spanish we have been working on more important concepts such as, "me gusta" (likes), time, dates, weather, colors, animals, and familia (as we are headed into our groupstays). The other day I assigned a family tree for homework where the students had to label their family members (i.e. abuelo-grandpa, abuela-grandma) and write a sentence about that specific person. It was great to learn more about each girl's family members and to see how they are now able to successfully construct sentences in Spanish. Coming up we will be going more into depth with present tense conjugations- ar, er, and ir verbs.

P.E. is going great, as well. This morning we had a hard workout including running up and down many stairs a multitude of times. We also did some good stretching and core work. Tomorrow we hope to play Ultimate Frisbee or do some fun relay games to get our heart rates up. The past week the girls got to sweat a good amount with the many hours of beautiful hikes they experienced. We are continuing to be active, get strong, and start our days with a good workout.

We will continue to travel on, have rich experiences, and learn more and more every day.
I hope all is flowing along wherever you may be.

With love and gratitude,
Phoebe

The World is our Classroom: History, Math Concepts & Global

This week has been lovely, it seems each day is bringing us closer to one another as well as with the environment and communities around us. The students are engaged, kind, inclusive and a joy to be with. Their teamwork and helpfulness is ever present, and they are soaking each moment up like sponges!

In History this week we ended our recent conversations about current events in Ecuador talking about immigration between Ecuador, the States, and other neighboring countries. The girls learned about remittances-- how international movement creates a sense of nationalism in those who leave their homes; how migration affects the economies where immigrants move as well as the economies they leave. We are now jumping into the Inca timeline, although first we focused on the pre-Inca cultures -- since Ecuador was not only 'colonized' by the Spanish in the 1500's, but the various indigenous people of Ecuador were taken over by the Incas in the early 1400's. The social stratification the students are seeing in the marketplace and in the highlands is a direct result of early relations between Indigenous, Inca, and Spanish peoples. This week we start our oral presentations, each student has researched a significant member of Ecuadorian or Peruvian history, and they will present for ten minutes on the effects this icon has had, and continues to have, on the population or politics in this region.

In Math Concepts our group is experiencing the Game of Life, both literally and figuratively. The students are engaged in conversation about goals, and finances, personal banking and credit cards. Who knew these subjects could be inspiring? To young minds yearning for more responsibility and freedom, these topics are quite relevant, and the students are soaking it up. The avenue in which we are learning about budgeting and the economy is through fictitious characters: we have a Doctor living in Napa; a school teacher who is a single mom of three in Santa Fe; a woman who works at a spa in Denver with two huskies and a 'dead-beat' boyfriend; and a young college grad living in Burlington, VT with three cats and an urge to spend and volunteer. The students are keeping a budget for all expenses including all fixed and flexible expenses paying for cars, insurance, rent, etc.

In Global Studies we have been reading Savages, a book about the Huarani people living in the Amazon during the exploration of oil. We are gearing up for Oil Day in March. Although dense in some parts, our students are engaging in the book: their comprehension, questions and connections are notable. They help each other understand and engage with what they're reading. This week we will dive into our groupstay activities, encouraging conversation and connection with all students experience. This week will no doubt be a once in a lifetime experience!

All is well, sending good thoughts of safety and harmony to you and your communities at home.
Jenae

And in the Spanish-speaking world...

...we've been tackling a variety of grammar subjects. In the cloudforest, the main house happened to have a full whiteboard, which is a once-in-a-semester occurence. We took extreme advantage of this to hash out certain sticky grammar points that require lots of detail, lots of examples, and lots of whiteboard space.
In Advanced Spanish, we covered the progressive tense (I am doing, we were learning), the personal "a", the distinction between the two verbs for "to be" - ser and estar (Hamlet's "to be or not to be" speech would be a lot less equivocal in Spanish), and direct and indirect object pronouns. The girls should be able to avoid these common pitfalls now, and consequently feel even more confident in their conversations.
Intermediate Spanish recently learned about proper adjective agreement (In Spanish, a spoon is feminine and a fork is masculine. Don't ask me why. But you have to make sure that any adjective you use to describe an object is in the correct form as well.) - one of the most common mistakes we see in both writing and speaking. We discussed the present progressive, how to express likes/fascinations/impressions properly, and the preterite. The girls can now speak in the past tense, a major step forward. And as we move into our groupstays next week, this is especially important!
Abrazos,
Phoebe y Allegra

Que pasa con Algebra?

Where does a traveling school girl take a test? It might be in a hammock under an avocado tree (watch out for the falling fruits), at a fabric-topped table in a dining room, or even in bed. As I type, the Algebra 2 girls are in the middle of their first chapter test - and I'm not sure exactly where they're working on the tests. Given that we are in the midst of our Spanish immersion classes, we aren't holding an in-class test. Instead, I gave the exam to the girls yesterday after dinner, and it is due tomorrow at breakfast - a full 36 hours to work on the test. Armed with only their brains and calculators (it's an honor-system-enforced, closed-book test), Lucy, Katie, Emily, Tate, and Izzi are tackling polynomials in all their various forms. Many of the girls were nervous for this first test, but having seen them all working hard in class, I feel confident that they will excel. It is a relief to the girls to be able to take as much time as they need, because I want them to work slowly and conscientiously. The goal is for them to prove their knowledge and mastery, not their speed. From polynomials, we move on into exponential and logarithmic functions - maybe the girls will even be able to model whether their new Ecuadorian purchases increase or decrease in value over time!
From under an avocado tree,
Allegra

Where in the world is Precalculus?

Pre-calculus is humming along, wherever we find ourselves in Ecuador. It is the only class we have five days a week (or almost five days a week; the most predictable part of TTS is its unpredictability), so that we can cover all the material. I have to confess: I love having it every day! It is much more relaxing to be able to devote the necessary time to each chapter, and seeing our same small group hard at work each day makes me smile. The girls, I think, enjoy it too. We have a very comfortable flow in class: I work with Kay, while Sarah, Stacy, and Livy work through a section, and then I check in to make sure everyone is on the right track. The next day might see Kay working independently while I work with the other three. The extra days of class ensure we can figure things out slowly and carefully if we get bogged down in a tricky problem or section, and have plenty of time to enjoy ourselves in the process. Kay has mastered systems of inequalities and is forging into a chapter on matrices, and Stacy, Livy, and Sarah are just finishing up the second of three sections on trigonometry. While all of them are nervous for the inevitable chapter tests, all the practice problems and individual attention ensure that they will be successful. I'll let you know how things continue to go in the coming weeks, as we progress towards midterms.
Inequally yours,
Allegra