SOUTHWEST
SCHOOL
ABOUT SOUTHWEST SCHOOL
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 Mission
In summary, Southwest School has the mission of strengthening Honduras through a system of education that prepares our youth to confront the challenges of the future and has as a vision a complete institution that grows and develops in the search for an improved education for our people.
Our Vision
The school attempts to provide the community with an education imparted only by professional in education, both Hondurans and foreigners.
Day by day the institution lends its services in pre-school, primary and middle school, maintaining as its next goal the establishment of high school, possibly with a specialty in some area of administration, in this way preparing the students to efficiently face any possible situation in their future studies.
As a middle range plan, the institution visualizes the establishment of a university, thus finalizing a system which logically, structurally and with a base on our reality, can provide a real affront to the future challenges that the citizenry graduating from our institution must face.
Our History
In 1996 a group of entrepreneurs from Intibucá:
Gertrudis Pineda Ponce de Herrera, Hazel Margarita Alvarado de Wesson, Caridad Pineda Ponce de Tejada, José Augusto Herrera, Troy Eliseo Wesson, Richard Marcelo Tejada, concerned by the lack of effectiveness in public education, decided to establish what is known today as Southwest School.
At that time it was a difficult task to establish a completely new concept for our city: a bilingual school, a school whose system was based from its beginnings on the North American system of education.
There were few who clearly accepted the importance of the English language as an emphasis in the education of their children. There were few that believed in a new concept, a new system. With more than 200 school days and a strict system of teaching, the “little school” (because of its reduced number of students) as it was called in the beginnings has grown and been converted into an institution with more than 120 students.
Currently the school has its own building which includes 15 classrooms and a spacious green area that the students can enjoy with plenty of freedom and fresh air. The building is located 2 km or 1.24 miles outside of the city of La Esperanza.