It's that time of year again. On December 1, BECA began its recruitment season for the 2010-2011 school year. We are currently looking to fill the positions of Program Administrator, K- through 9th-grade Teachers, and Summer Camp Counselors. If you or someone you know may be interested in learning more, please visit our volunteer experience webpage. After reviewing our program, you can fill out our online application. First-round applications are due by February 1, 2010, however, as spots are limited and the admissions process is rolling, interested candidates are encouraged to apply early.

This year's recruitment season will be different from previous years in one key respect: BECA is now offering a two-year teaching position for the first time ever. In the past, BECA informally offered quality teachers financial incentives to stay for a second year. We did so because we intuitively and anecdotally realized that second year teachers are much more effective in the classroom thanks to their previous year's experience. Just as importantly for a community school model like ours, they serve as a bridge between new teachers and the community, helping new team members adapt to their roles much more quickly than they otherwise would.

During BECA's Spring 2009 Board of Directors Meeting, the Board decided to introduce a uniform incentives package to enable BECA teachers to stay for a second year. By introducing a formal package with set figures, we hope to gradually shift BECA towards being a 2-year program. We plan to actively promote our newly envisioned incentives package during this recruitment season in order to more actively recruit individuals willing to consider a two-year commitment. If ongoing evaluation confirms the anecdotal evidence that offering second year teachers stipends is a worthwhile investment, we aim that all BECA teachers be 2-year volunteers by the 2011-2012 academic year.

Please email us if you have any questions about the 2010-2011 recruitment process.

On Tuesday November 17, about 60 people congregated in San Francisco's financial district to raise awareness and money for BECA. The event marks the first time that BECA has hosted a significant fundraising event outside of New York City. BECA Executive Director Laurence Birdsey remarked, "Our San Francisco event was an experiment to see if we could tap into BECA's support network outside of New York City. Without a doubt, that experiment turned out to be an unqualified success. We will look to replicate it in other cities in the coming months."

Laurence decided to hold a fundraiser in San Francisco at the urging of his high school friend, Lacy Caruthers, who co-hosted the event. Lacy and Laurence promoted the event and invited other friends in the area to help co-host. BECA board member Hilary Hammell secured the venue, Taverna Aventine, which provided drink specials for the occasion. Another co-host, Jamie McNab, brought a dozen Stanford School of Business friends up from Palo Alto. McNab said, "It was a great event in a terrific space for a wonderful cause."

In addition to brief remarks by Laurence, the event featured a raffle and a silent auction of framed photographs taken by Birdsey on a recent trip to Honduras. Altogether, the event raised over $5,250 for BECA. If you are interested in hosting a BECA fundraiser in your city, please contact Laurence Birdsey.

Last school year, BECA Administrator Jessica Gorelick developed a program to provide educational opportunities for the parents of SJBS students. This year's Administrator, Mike Buttram, has picked up where Jessica left off. With the assistance of Upper School Resource Teacher Katy Lois and SJBS Director Amarilys Quintero, Mike held the first Escuela de Padres (School for Parents) class in late November. The class focused primarily on health and nutrition issues in the home. Katy, Mike, and Amarilys are working closely to develop material for future classes and are reaching out to potential guest speakers to conduct classes on issues such as personal finance.

The School for Parents program was initially introduced as one avenue by which scholarship parents could meet their monthly quota of scholarship points. After the initial success of the program, the classes were expanded to accommodate all parents. Gorelick, who pioneered the program, says, "During my home visits, I saw a clear need for some basic education in areas like family budgeting, sexual education, and nutrition. It seemed like putting together a class for parents was part of a more holistic solution to many of the problems we are trying to remedy in Cofradia."

To learn more about the School for Parents or to suggest potential guest speakers, please email Laurence Birdsey.

Thanks to the networking of BECA supporter Tim Vanover, BECA Director Laurence Birdsey met with the Epicopal Bishop of Honduras, Lloyd Allen, to discuss areas of overlapping interests this past October. The Episcopal Church runs a network of schools in Honduras, some of which are bilingual and others that cater to disadvantaged populations. Birdsey and Vanover met with Bishop Allen and his Educational Deputy Jackie Ruiz over dinner to explain the BECA model and learn more about the Church's educational programming. The informational exchange quickly yielded results, as Birdsey went to visit a Episcopal school in El Ocotillo later that week.

The community of El Ocotillo was established by the Episcopal Church in the wake of Hurricane Mitch to provide housing for displaced families. Soon after, the Episcopal Church constructed the Fe Y Alegria school to provide reasonably-priced private education to the community's children. The Episcopal Church is considering introducing a bilingual program to the school, in which case BECA will help advise the Church. BECA Administrator Mike Buttram has since visited another Episcopal school in Villanueva, and the dialog between the two organizations continues. BECA looks forward to a fruitful relationship with the Episcopal Church of Honduras!

Second-year teacher Rebecca Bush writes about expanding SJBS Preparatoria from half-day to full-day:

"Returning to SJBS for a second year has been an exciting experience and I have been able to use my unique position at the school to jump right back into learning with the 2009-2010 Preparatoria students. ["Preparatoria," or "Prepa," is the Honduran equivalent of Kindergarten]. Having taught both Pre-K and Prepa last time around, I have been able to use that journey to more fully understand my goals for my current class. A second year with the same grade has given me a head start on experience and a second year with my students has afforded me the opportunity to really get to know them on a new level.

"After only the first few weeks of school and seeing how far ahead my students already were compared to last year's Prepa, I began to seriously think about extending Prepa's schedule to full day. While there were some scheduling difficulties to figure out, everybody involved in the decision knew that the main reason to extend the day was also the best reason, the students.

"Being able to see my students again after lunch has not only been educational but also a lot of fun. They are not only learning how to be in school for a full day and gaining the self-control that is needed for that, but we are able to embark on all the learning adventures that we did not previously have time for. While the mornings in many ways still has a more structured feel, I have been able to use our afternoons for more free form activities, like dramatic play, science exploration, painting and block play. The full day Prepa students are gaining valuable socialization skills through these different activities as well as continuing to work on their English comprehension.

"The afternoon has also given me the chance to focus on both of my goals for this year's Prepa: to learn all the things one should learn in Kindergarten and to speak and understand English. Balancing these two goals proved a challenging task with the previous shortened day. More than doubling the amount of time I have with them has afforded the Prepa class the opportunity to do it all and they have been consistently proving to me that they can. Their spoken English and comprehension is impressive, their socialization and behavior are astounding and their knowledge of the alphabet, numbers and math concepts is amazing. I can happily say that this year's Prepa class is months ahead of last year's Preparatoria, leaving them well prepared to enter first grade and bringing them closer to being on par with first language learners around the world."

The following article was written by Maureen Gesley (Kinder Teacher) and Katy Lois (Upper School Resource Teacher)

We all know that a quality education encompasses more than just math problems and science facts. Good schools also teach how to be contributing citizens and healthy individuals. To emphasize the value of nutrition for our students, we have created the "Fruit Fridays" program at SJBS. Every Friday, when a student brings a piece of fruit to eat for lunch or recess, they receive a ticket that allows them to wear colored clothes (as opposed to their uniform) the following Friday. Students are also grouped into class teams (i.e. 3rd Grade Grapes, Middle School Mangoes), each grade competing for an end-of-parcial party for the class that eats the most fruit overall. During Acto Civicos, the past week's results are presented via giant fruit-covered poster. The week's winning team gets to display the banana bunch trophy in their classroom for all the school to see.

Already, the "Fruit Friday" program is proving itself to be a great success! Not only do the majority of students bring a piece of fruit on Friday, but we have noticed them bringing fruit on other days of the week as well. It is great to see these children excited about eating healthfully. In addition, "Fruit Fridays" have also enhanced a sense of SJBS pride and developed a growing school-wide culture. We hope that this program and others similar to it will continue for years to come. "Vegetales Viernes", perhaps?

Kelly Wilkinson was BECA's Administrator at SJBS for the 2004-2005 school year.

"After helping SJBS complete its first year as BECA Program Administrator (2004-2005), I have continued to build my career in international education and have continued to live life adventurously. Immediately after leaving Cofradia I led high school students on a summer experiential learning program to Oaxaca, Mexico and while there was offered a job at SIT Study Abroad in Brattleboro, VT. At SIT, as a Study Abroad Coordinator for Latin American Studies, I managaed multiple programs in countries including Nicaragua, El Salvador, Mexico, Panama, Belize, and Jamaica. After a couple of years in Vermont, I decided to make a move to Denver, CO where I took on a number of concurrent activities. I was PR Director for my friends' independent film release. The movie is called "10mph" and you can see it on Netflix! One of my exciting achievements was planning and carrying out a month-long cinematic tour that in which I drove over 10,000 miles taking the film to 25 cities in 30 days. I also put my Spanish to use while helping interperet for social workers going into Spanish speaking homes, and I taught ESL at Berlitz Institute in Denver.

"A year and half ago I took a new job and made yet another move to where I currently reside, Austin, TX. I now work for Semester at Sea - a multi-country study abroad program aboard a floating campus that takes college students around the world in one semester stopping in 10-12 countries. My job is Assistant Director of Univesity Outreach, which means I am charged with student recruiting and maintaining relationships with college and university administrators. I am happy continuing to help students get the opportunity to study and interact overseas and promoting study abroad as an integral party of every college student's experience.

"I am also enjoying living in Austin where there is a great music scene and great outdoor activities. I travel quite a lot in my job as well as personally. This past summer I had the enviable opportunity to spend 19 days traveling around South Africa, which had to be one of the best trips I've taken. My future plans could include a possible PhD but most definitely more travel. At the top of my list is a trip back to Honduras to visit the community of families that I think about each and every day."

This past Summer, BECA Founder Jaime Koppel encouraged BECA Director Laurence Birdsey to apply for a unique leadership training program in New York City, the Tenenbaum Leadership Initiative (TLI), a program run out of Milano - The New School for Management and Urban Policy. Over a six-month period, the TLI trains a cohort of non-profit executive directors who are succeeding their non-profit's founder or long-term leader. The program, titled "Leading After the Legacy," is fully funded by Ann Tenenbaum and Tom Lee in order to help non-profits deal with potentially treacherous transition periods. Laurence applied and was accepted into the program which began this October.

"The TLI is perfectly suited for a lot of the issues I face on a daily basis," remarks Laurence. "I have to grapple with how I can leave my own leadership mark while preserving the legacy and imprint that Jaime has left on the organization." Laurence meets every few weeks with a group of executive directors that comprise his cohort. "It's incredibly reassuring to walk into a room with 19 others who are dealing with the same set of issues. The classes, which are part group discussion and part lecture, maintain a good balance of information, statistics, and personal anecdotes. But perhaps the most useful aspect of the program is the amount of self-reflection that it requires. It's not often that I'm able to think about BECA and my leadership style from the 30,000 foot perspective."

Laurence will continue with the classes and leadership coaching session until March. To learn more about the TLI, please visit its website.

BECA currently has arranged for two college groups to come visit its site in Cofradia this Spring. Groups of 15 students from both Davidson College and Columbia University will be spending their Spring Breaks in Honduras. The student-led social tourism triips allow BECA to realize its mission of meaningful cultural exchange, and they can also serve as an effective recruitment tool for future teachers.

Both trips are currently in the fundraising stage. In order to make the trips available to all, both groups have opted to fundraise a large portion of the trip's cost. Charlie Gillihan, leaders of the Columbia trip, says "I was immediately interested in putting together a trip through BECA because of its low cost barrier and the ability to fundraiser for a good cause. Most ""social tourism' trips advertised on college campuses are run by for-profit companies and cost thousands of dollars."

Both trips will spend a full week working at SJBS in Cofradia. Participants will lodge in Honduran homestay, have the opportunity to co-teach in a class, and work on a building project at the school. Additionally, the groups will take a side trip to either Copan Ruins or Cusuco National Park.

To learn more about BECA's social tourism program, please refer to our previous article. on UVA's student-led trip last year. If you, or someone you know, would be interested in leading a trip to visit BECA's operations in Honduras, please contact Director Laurence Birdsey..

After several years of service, Melissa Bride and Nick Zosel-Johnson have decided to step down from the Board. In their place, BECA teaching alumna Sarah Shubitowski has been elected as a replacement.

Mel Bride was BECA's longest serving Board Member, and a driving force behind the early development of the BECA model. Mel met BECA Founder Jaime Koppel via an online posting on idealist.org in 2002. She and her husband Jim were looking for meaningful volunteer opportunities in Latin America and Mel came down to help BECA with end of the school year activities in June 2002. Around the same time, Mel also became involved with the Juan Pablo Segundo Cooperative as well as the non-profit group Sustainable Harvest International. She and Jim also subsequently spent a year teaching at Alison Bixby Stone Bilingual School (ABSS) in Honduras. During their time there, they helped BECA to build a relationship with ABSS that has been extraordinarily important in providing our teachers with quality professional development and overall pedagogical mentoring and support. Mel's contributions to BECA over the years have been extraordinarily significant - she hosted fundraisers, collected supplies, and played a large role in supporting volunteers. Mel has left perhaps her most indelible mark on BECA in the form of a rigorous volunteer recruitment process. She developed a strong recruiting relationship with her former students at St. Andrew's School, a boarding school in Middletown DE where she taught Spanish for nearly 10 years. BECA teaching alumni Sallie Graves, Anna Hickman, Hilary Hammell, and Laurence Birdsey were all students of Mel's in the late 1990s. And, Mel helped to hone the BECA recruitment process into the rigorous interview-intensive process that has helped us to be so successful at recruiting and retaining high-quality, service-minded volunteers.

Nick Zosel-Johnson has served on the BECA Board since July of 2008. He became involved with BECA in 2006 when he developed and led the first-ever BECA Summer Camp. In 2007, he organized a group of fellow students from Claremont-McKenna College to visit BECA's site in Cofradia. That trip became the basis for BECA's ongoing social tourism program. As a Board Member, Nick focused on building out the social tourism program and also worked on data collection and the implementation of testing metrics at SJBS. In his resignation letter to the Board, Nick wrote, "I will hope to remain involved with BECA through new opportunities, and wish the organization the very best. I consider you all great friends. It has been an honor to serve as part of the BECA family."

During their Fall 2009 Board Meeting, BECA's Directors thanked Mel and Nick for their years of service and nominated and elected Sarah Shubitowski to the Board. A 2006 graduate of Calvin College with a teaching degree, Sarah taught second grade at SJBS during the 2006-2007 school year. She had previously volunteered at a bilingual school (teaching language arts) and completed an ethnographic study on Hondurans' perceptions of bilingual education. After BECA, Sarah worked with National Student Partnerships in Chicago as the Site Coordinator for a community resource center serving low-income members of the community. She was in charge of supervising the college student volunteers that worked with community members, making connections with social service organizations within the community, and serving on a community advisory board. Currently, she is participating in a 6-month anti-hunger/anti- poverty field internship in Nashville, TN as a Bill Emerson National Hunger Fellow.

BECA thanks Mel and Nick for their years of service, and enthusiastically welcomes Sarah onto the Board.

BECA Administrator Mike Buttram asked a simple question: why don't scholarship parents take ownership of the scholarship program? Up until October, it had been the Administrator's role to run scholarship meetings, to tally their points, and to facilitate the planning of their activities. Mike, however, thought that he could do more to align the program with BECA's philosophy of community engagement: "When you look at the model we've established in Cofradia, the guiding principle has been that the community must have leadership buy-in at every step in the process. There were clear areas where we could better empower scholarship parents." Mike and BECA did just that.

Mike filed the following report about the changes to the becado (scholarship) program:

"From the construction of new bookshelves in each classroom to the day in-day out cleaning and general maintenance of SJBS, you'll find our dedicated becado (scholarship) parents hard at work. This work is done in fulfillment of the BECA contract which each family or caregiver signs when their student is awarded a scholarship. In this manner there are no handouts, we keep costs low, and we are assured large amount of parental/community involvement in our school.

"As program administrator for BECA, a large part of my time here this year has been spent working directly with the becado families to plan projects, coordinate fundraisers, and ensure all work obligations are being met. Let me just say that it has been a joy to get to know and work side by side with these families whose dedication shows their endless appreciation for this opportunity of having their students study with us at SJBS. And as our Becado program grows, so has our potential to benefit the school through the hard work and many talents of these becado families.

"At this time we have 49 families with 62 kids receiving a full or half scholarship from BECA! Managing the requirements, maximizing the potential of our workforce, and simply recognizing the school's many needs have become an increasingly difficult task for each year's program administrator. In addition, the top down management style of decision making and administration we've used within the becado program has been somewhat counterintuitive to the community leadership and involvement BECA has striven to create and foster here at SJBS. So in light of this, I brought a new proposition to the BECA board and later to the becado group itself and on October 6th, a group of seven individuals from the becado families were voted into position to become the first Grupo de Representantes del Programa Becado, (Representative Group of the Becado Progam). These seven incredibly dedicated men and women have met with me weekly to address concerns from within the larger group, to plan projects and fundraisers, and to oversee the smooth operation of our program. The group has continuously proven themselves the ideal persons for the job as they have worked tirelessly with me on food sales and in raising money for an SJBS visit to a real concert hall in San Pedro Sula where the whole school was treated to a true orchestral experience! We've also worked together on weekends to coordinate and build a new 500 meter long perimeter wall along one side of the school. We've fixed desks, sold hamburgers, cut grass and swept, and this group of seven representatives has been at the forefront of every project and in the background of every event arriving first and leaving last, and doing all the cleaning. I can't tell you what a benefit it has been to me to work with them nor could I possibly undervalue the friendships that I've found within this group.

"According to Miguel Perez, one representative and our dedicated job boss in all things construction, "The education that Maria [Miguel's daughter] is receiving is a gift worth more than gold. Any way I can do my part to help earn that and make our school a better place you only need to ask." And boy have I asked! Miguel has spent literally hundreds of hours at the school and has built or repaired just about everything there. This is the responsibility and ownership that is the best of our becado program, and with him and six others like him at the head of it all our program will continue to make SJBS a better place.

"Each year as our school and the becado population continue to grow, our program administrators must come and go. The new aspect of self-governance and the sense of ownership this Grupo de Representantes bring assures us the continuity that will keep our BECA families moving forward, fulfilling their obligations, keeping the school clean and running, and simply getting the job done."

Every November for the past four years, BECA has sent its teachers to to visit the Alison Bixby Stone School (ABSS) and attend the nearby Discovery Conference. While this year's Discovery Conference was postponed, our teachers still made the trek to Tegucigalpa for expanded teacher workshops led by ABSS teachers. Courses included "Resource Teacher Strategies," "The Socratic Method," and "Making Center Activities."

Fifth Grade SJBS Teacher Jessica Lin submitted the following dispatch about the trip:

"After spending six hours on buses and windy roads overlooking lush Honduran hillsides, we arrived in Zamorano to be welcomed by familiar faces. Such was the beginning of a wonderfully fruitful visit to a different part of the country that is home to a school that serves as a model for bilingual education: Alison Bixby Stone School (ABSS). Walking into the sixth grade classroom, I heard nearly perfect English flowing out of a girl's mouth as she explained why she disagreed with her fellow students about a novel they had read. After the initial shock of how well their fifth and sixth grade students spoke English, I soaked in as much as I could from classroom observations and teaching workshops arranged by ABSS teacher and BECA Summer Institute instructor Julie Schillreff. We were surrounded by a feast of shiny, new, exciting, and effective teaching ideas, which provoked a bittersweet sensation. Because I've been teaching for nearly half of a school year, I have developed a much better idea of what works in my classroom and how to execute ideas. These months have given me much insight into how to teach and apply new ideas in my classroom. Watching ABSS teachers in action confirmed to me that I knew how to use these techniques. However, I couldn't help but taste the bitterness of wishing I could start over with my newfound slivers of wisdom.

"On the sweet side, some of the shiny new techniques have found a place in my classroom since we've returned. Perhaps what I'm proudest of is the incorporation of some differentiation strategies to give all the kids something that is pushing them at their own level. In Math, I've started circling different problems on each student's quiz so that all will be challenged appropriately. Also in Math, we've started doing activities in centers and groups. The advanced students are given problems with more steps and more critical thinking while the lower students continue to work on basic problems in game form. For English, I meet with students individually and assign them different literary skills or spelling words to focus on. Other systemic changes and fun new activities have also been added or are working their way into the classroom.

"In the end, however, the most valuable lesson I learned at Alison Bixby was that our kids at SJBS are doing well. Before the trip and even at the beginning of it, I believed that our kids might be behind because we don't have the abundant resources of a school like ABSS. One trip wiser, I no longer believe that. Sometimes it easy to lose sight of how much are students are learning because bilingual education is so different in nature to monolingual education. Even with our limited experience and resources, our students are indeed receiving a quality education because of our will to see our them succeed and our dedication to the mission."