Home schooling program

Figuring out a school program of the girls is becoming more difficult. There is a home school program that is developed for Costa Rica. It is meant to be a self taught course and if you work thorough the course books you should be able to pass the exams. In order to graduate from you need to pass each of the classes that are designated for that year. For the 8^th grade, they are required to take six classes: Spanish, English, Science, Math, Civil Duties, and Social Studies. Every three months there is a new testing date and you can sign up to take as many tests on that day as you can handle (I believe that the max is 3 which means that you can complete 8^th grade in 6^th months).

We do not have a teacher on staff. Right now our paid psychologist is in charge of the education in the morning and then any therapies or other paperwork that she must do in the afternoon. I will stop by to help explain any of the trickier Math and Science topics if they need help. This system worked well for maybe one week. With only one or two girls, (Especially with one who is extremely motivated; she wants to be a police officer when she is 18 and then study to become a doctor when she is older) and two people helping (one of whom is a trained Math and Science teacher) this system can be possible, but it is very hard to be self motivated for these girls. I am worried about what will happen when there are 15-18 different girls, all at different skill levels, and being challenged with different learning disabilities. It seems like it would be difficult to improve without a teacher helping to guide and providing assessments to keep kids accountable.

Luckily, there are two teachers here for the week, who have worked with struggling Latin American children in the past. They are a Math teacher and an ESL teacher, who are here to volunteer for a week. I am looking forward to working with them to come up with ideas of how a home school program could work in the safe house. So far we have begun to create new lessons plans for each week of the home school curriculum that include, objectives, guiding questions, activities, projects which we hope will help the girls as they work through the home school program. I still believe that letting the girls that can go to school, go to a small local school would be the best for their education as well as social and mental health.