Schools Around the World – La Fortuna, Costa Rica

Something I am hoping we can explore this year are all the different schools around the world. It’s so interesting to see how other countries do day to day life, and school is definitely a part of that.

Escuela Finca Zeta Trece

This was the school in our neighborhood in La Fortuna. Similar to the neighborhood elementary school Braxton attends (and Alexis attended), this school is for children from Preschool – 6th grade. They refer to that as primary school in Costa Rica. The school is made up of multiple different one story buildings with court yards separating them. They have an open air concept to almost all of the buildings here. This allows air to flow through the buildings, as most places do not have air conditioning. The entire school has a chain link fence surrounding it, with barbed wire strung across the top.

In Costa Rica the school year starts in early February and goes until the beginning of December. They have a two week break in mid-July. We learned during our coffee tour that this schedule was derived long ago when the children used to work in the coffee fields. Coffee is harvested from November – January in Costa Rica. The children we saw attending this school wore uniforms. The younger grades had navy pants and white polo shirts. Older kids had the same navy pants and a dark green polo shirt.