About Southwest

Southwest School is located just outside the city of La Esperanza, department of Intibucá in Honduras.

Southwest School is a bilingual school, meaning that roughly 80% of the instruction is in English (most students' second language) and the other 20% is in Spanish (most students' native language). There are not enough bilingual educators in La Esperanza to achieve this instructional goal, so the school must look to foreigners provide the bulk of the English instruction.

The class sizes are small. The upper grades have between seven and fifteen students and the younger grades have around 20 since the school has seen growth in the past few years. While the youngest groups have their own teacher for all subjects, the elementary and secondary grades rotate teachers (the students stay in the same classroom) with the goal of tapping into each teacher's strengths, especially as language models.

Currently, there are three foreign teachers and one Honduran teacher who rotate between the four upper grades (4th - 7th). The foreign teachers teach social studies (with a U.S. focus), science, math, and English language arts (spelling, literature, compostition, grammar) in the English language. The Honduran teacher gives instruction in Spanish language arts and social studies in Spanish, with a Honduran perspective on the world.

Each of these teachers also serves as the homeroom teacher for a grade, for which they give classes in arts and crafts, p.e., home ec., and health. These extra classes are given once a week and the homeroom teacher is responible for planning, teaching, and assigning grades for those subjects. Specialists teach music and Bible classes. Library class is usually the responsibility of the language arts teachers, gardening and agriculture is taught by the science teacher and computer class is usually taught by the math teacher.

First, second and third grades have a similar structure to that of 4th-7th mentioned above, but rotating fewer teachers. The 2004-2005 school year will likely be similar, with a few modifications to include the eighth grade.

Within the school we have a professional library in English for the teachers. We also have a school library with more than 1,000 children´s books. The students have texts in English reading (with support materials for spelling, grammar, and phonics), Spanish, science, handwriting, and Spanish social studies. Math is taught with a hands-on method using the Dale-Seymore Investigations series, for which we have the complete teacher’s guides and the manipulatives. There are no student texts in this approach until 6th and 7th grades. For social studies, there will be a student text book adoption this coming school year.

Our school calendar is from mid August through mid June, with a three week vacation at Christmastime and a one week vacation at Eastertime, along with some Honduran and some foreign holidays (we take a Thanksgiving holiday, for example, which is not a holiday here). Holiday celebrations are an important part of the school tradition, with student programs for the parents at Christmas, Father’s Day and Mother’s Day, and schoolwide celebrations at Halloween, Thanksgiving, Children’s Day and Easter and Valentine’s Day. The students enjoy learning about customs that are important for the foreign teachers and sharing local traditions. Homeroom teachers help their classes prepare skits, dances, songs or other participation for the programs.