Name: Kelly McCabe Initial License Sought: Elementary & CLD Endorsement

Student Teaching Semester: Fall of 2017 Current GPA: 3.65

Professional Rationale:
Honesty I wondered why I was making this decision. After sometime of self-reflection I realized
that I like adventure. I like to be challenged. I like to be put in different situations and figure out
ways to end up back on top. I think this would be a great next step for me. For me, home is
Centennial, Colorado. There are many schools in Denver that have many ELL students. Right
now I could see myself teaching in Denver. This would allow myself to be in a greater ELL
population. This teaching abroad experience would help me to better prepare myself for my
future career. My goal is to become better at reaching out and teaching students who fit in the
categories of ELL and bilingual. Based off of my research I believe this experience would benefit
my goal. This school is for bilingual students of Spanish and English. With having the school be
this way, it would allow me to teach my student but also learn from them. It also would allow
me to see effective ways of teaching these students in-terms of using methods learned in my
CLD courses and teaching them. If I did not student teach abroad and know that I would not be
prepared as I could be to teach CLD students. I am sure I could get by with this but not knowing
how I could relate and truly help my students could be lacking. I do not want that. I want my
students to feel comfortable and that I can help them.

About the school:

All information was gathered from the schools website (http://www.panam.ed.cr/). The Pan-
American School is located in Heredia, Costa Rica. This is about 6 miles North of the Capital, San
Jose. At this school there are around 600 students ranging from PlayKids (18 months) to 11 th
grade. This includes Early Childhood, Primary, Middle and High school. The classrooms offer a
9:1 student to teacher ratio. Pan-American is authorized to offer the International
Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma. It also have received the accreditation by the New England
Association of Schools and Colleges (NEASC). The Pan-American are members of the Association
of Private Education School (ACEP), National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS) and the
Association of American Schools of Central America (AASCA). The school uses an acronym as a
philosophy and foundation of their curriculum, they call it V-TESI. It is listed as followed:
V- Values
T- Technology
E- Ecology
S- Service
I- Investigation
The General Director is Elizabeth Head. A phone number for the school is 506-2293-7393. A
contact e-mail address for more information is info@panam.ed.cr .

Personal Rationale:
I have a hard time of figuring out what skills I believe I have. I am a very organized person. I can
be given a pile of things and have the ability to organize them. My schoolwork is always
complete on time and I accredit that to my organizational skills. With this, I believe it requires a
lot of patience. I am very patient with things. I have learned over the years that things will not
be perfect on the first tries and that things will take some time to understand and comprehend.
I am a very positive and optimistic person which is helpful in a classroom. With all of that one
thing has given me the abilities to increase these skills. Many do not know about this, in 2010 I
was diagnosed as Dyslexic. This diagnosis can be a weakness but also a skill. It is a weakness
because it takes me longer than others to complete things. It is also a skill because it always me
to think outside of the box and push myself to succeed. It also allows me to relate to my
students and help my students using skills and strategies I have used to help myself with my
own learning.

Challenges:
If someone asked me this a few years ago I would have some pretty major emotions associated
with leaving the country. Nowadays I would say majority of my past emotions are gone. In the
Spring of 2015 semester I studied abroad through the FLC International Office to Darwin,
Australia. I would be lying if I said everything was easy and no hardships occurred. Being abroad
challenged me to leave home and country for such an extensive amount of time. Within this,
some factors included I was away from my family, my known life, the time difference was 15
hours from home, so it was hard to contact them. All these things were hard but I kept telling
myself how this is a once in a lifetime opportunity, take it all in. This idea always went through
my head. Looking back the whole experience allowed me to really get me out of my comfort
zone and be vulnerable. This is something I am grateful for. It made me a stronger person
overall.
Another challenge would be the language barrier. I do not know much Spanish. I took some in
high school and in fact that is how I found out I had a learning disability. I think one way to
overcome this is to use the resources around me. EL Centro offers times for students to speak
in Spanish. To help me get better I would schedule time to talk with someone in Spanish.

Expense Accounting:
Having been abroad before I have an idea of the process and what payments to expend. Being
of Native American decent I will not have to pay tuition. I do have to pay for student fees and
housing (I live on campus). To student teach abroad I would have to pay for my student fees,
this semester they are $988, I will say $1,000. While abroad it would be $580 for four weeks.
Staying there for a maximum of 20 weeks would be 2,900. Since both breakfast and dinner are
provided, that leaves me with paying for 7 lunches. For the ease of things I would either bring a
basic lunch or buy the school lunch being offered. This is hard to estimate. I will over-estimate
and say it would be $4 for a school lunch for 5 days a week for a 17 week school year, this is
$340. For the weekend I will buy groceries to feed myself. I will say that is $15 a week or $300
for 20 weeks. Living in Denver I can fly to Costa Rico for around $500. Traveling in country I will
need bus money, I am estimating this will be $85 for travel to school and back. Maybe an
additional $100 for other travel needs. I will have to pay $60 to depart the country twice and
$300 for the out of area fee. I will plan for $2,000 to travel around the area and fun things. This
all totals $7,585.