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Summer school in Costa Rica
Local teachers attend summer school in Costa Rica to better communicate with their Spanish-speaking students
By Sheila G. Miller / The Bulletin
Published: August 23. 2008 4:00AM PST
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Marcia Lux, a first-grade teacher at Ponderosa Elementary, receives a diploma at the Intercultura Language School’s graduation in Costa Rica. Lux said she wanted to study Spanish in part because she’d like to be able to communicate directly with Spanish-speaking parents, not through a translator.
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For three weeks this summer, teacher Elaine Ellsworth spent hours in a classroom each day, working so hard she found herself staring out the window, trying to get her brain to relax.
And she did it partly for her students here in Bend.
Ellsworth and several other Bend-La Pine Schools teachers spent weeks this summer learning Spanish in Costa Rica.
They were drawn to the language school more for the potential to communicate with Spanish-speaking students and families than for the possibility of white-sand beaches.
“I’m really excited to use it with my students,” said Ellsworth, a first-year teacher. “When you speak a little bit of Spanish … students know you value them and their culture and language.”
Four Bend-La Pine Schools teachers took Spanish-language courses at Intercultura Language School this summer.
The school, which has a city campus and a beach campus, offers various levels of language instruction, as well as lodging with Costa Rican host families. All the teachers attended the beach campus, Samara, although Ponderosa Elementary teacher Marcia Lux also took classes at the city campus in Heredia.
Lux has always wanted to speak another language fluently. She’d taken classes at Central Oregon Community College and through Bend Metro Park and Recreation District, but wanted a chance to become truly fluent. The first-grade teacher did lots of research to determine where she should study, wanting a place that was safe and stable.
She overlapped her time with Mary Becker, a teacher at Jewell Elementary, who teaches English to students just learning the language. And, as it turned out, Ellsworth was traveling to the same school with Amy Stringer, a teacher at Juniper Elementary.
Stringer, who took the language course for credit through Brookhaven College in Texas, received reimbursement from the school district for 75 percent of the tuition, about $515 of the more than $1,000 she spent on the trip. Becker also applied for reimbursement, but Lux and Ellsworth paid their own way, Lux because she didn’t want to deal with all the paperwork and Ellsworth because she’s just now starting her first year in the school district.
“It’s always been a lifetime goal of mine to improve my Spanish skills,” Stringer said. “I’ve tried many different avenues. Community college classes, classes I took in high school and college, so I had that basic starting point. But I wanted the ability to have a conversation with kids and especially my students who are brand new to speaking English.”
She said she also wanted to be able to communicate with parents.
Stringer has a certification to teach English language learners, but she wanted more conversational Spanish fluency, so she headed for Costa Rica.
Daily lessons
The teachers’ schedule in Costa Rica followed a pattern each day. Lux said they woke up each morning to the sounds of howler monkeys and roosters. Then came a breakfast of fruit, black coffee and corn flakes while members of their host families sat and chatted with them. Then it was off to school, a 20-minute walk. Lux walked along the beach to get there.
Once at school, students had four hours of classes. Classes, Stringer said, were pretty intense, with homework to complete each evening. Then there were activities including salsa dance classes, yoga, horseback riding and cooking. On Fridays, language lessons gave way to culture lessons and trips.
One challenge, Lux and Ellsworth admitted, was the animals and bugs they sometimes encountered. There were cockroaches and lizards, as well as horses and cows that followed the teachers to and from school each day.
Ellsworth, who has visited Mexico in the past and who also holds a certification to educate students whose first language is not English, wanted to immerse herself in the language. And she wanted to learn a language that was more useful than French, which she spent six years studying, never using it until she set foot in France.
“I wanted to be forced to speak Spanish,” she said. “I wanted to think in Spanish.”
She and Stringer lived together with a Costa Rican family, and the family spoke to them entirely in Spanish.
When she was in Costa Rica, Ellsworth said, she finally understood how her Spanish-speaking students felt in class each day. She was exhausted after four hours of concentrating so closely, trying to figure out exactly what was being said. She had a teacher who would sneak her words in English so she’d know what was going on, and Ellsworth said it made her want to depend on her native language instead of push through in Spanish.
“I know they have to produce (English), and I’m not going to give them the words,” she said. “But there are times when a student needs context, and they need someone more proficient in English who speaks Spanish so they can help them access the content, explain the assignment.”
All of the teachers said they’ve used translators to interact with parents, and they said they’ll probably have to continue doing that. But the Spanish they’ve learned helps.
“I’d use a translator, and I was pretty sure it was not exactly what I said,” Lux said. “I want to speak directly to the moms. The kids pick up (English) fast, but for the mothers it’s a little bit harder.”
Stringer said she thinks it makes Spanish-speaking families feel more welcome at the school if there’s someone they know and trust who speaks Spanish. And when translators have to be used, she said, it feels impersonal.
“There’s a resource available who can communicate,” she said. “But I feel like you lose that personal connection.”
Kids are their focus
The teachers know there are critics, people who think students and families who live in the U.S. need to learn English rather than have teachers learning Spanish.
But that’s not their focus.
“These are the kids that are here,” Stringer said. “They’re here in the schools, and they’re trying so hard. And to have a kid in your classroom trying so hard and getting frustrated, it’s a personal choice to want to try on my own time and learn to communicate and help them.”
Ellsworth agreed.
“Doctors don’t say, well, you shouldn’t be here so go ahead and be sick,” Ellsworth said. “Their job is to heal. And our job is to teach. And we do that with the best methods we can.”
Lux sees it slightly differently.
“They’re here to learn English, and yeah, I’m teaching it to them,” she said, even if that means using a little Spanish.
Ellsworth and Stringer plan to prepare for parent-teacher conferences together, figuring out the vocabulary and verb tenses they’ll need. And the teachers all plan to meet up once each month to practice speaking the language.
“I feel much stronger. I feel like a lot of my anxiety of speaking Spanish was cured,” Stringer said. “But I still have a long way to go.”
Sheila G. Miller can be reached at 541-617-7831 or at smiller@bendbulletin.com.
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