Students practice language with natives
Kayaking, lounging on a beach or zip-lining over a tropical forest. It's not a bad way to practice your Spanish.
That's what Lisa Castiglione's students discovered on their trip last year to Costa Rica.
The Karns City High School Spanish teacher, four chaperones and 10 of her students or former students spent June 20 to 29 on a school trip to the Central American nation.
Castiglione said the Karns City High School Spanish, German and French classes rotate on taking overseas trips, with each class going once every three years.
She said that works out well because it takes the students nearly two years of fundraising efforts to come up with the $2,200 apiece the trip costs.
Castiglione said students raised funds by “selling hoagies, flowers, candles and barbecue sauces, different products.”
Of the student group, two were Karns City High graduates: Kara Yasika, a college sophomore at Slippery Rock University, and Deryk Herold, a senior at Thiel College. Some in the group had as little as two years of Spanish and some had as many as six years of Spanish instruction.
Castiglione said the Karns City group used Explorica, a company that helps teachers create educational tours full of interactive learning experiences.
“The guide meets you at the airport,” said Castiglione and, after joining up with a group of nine students from Chicago and a group of 12 students from Philadelphia that would make up their party during their stay in Costa Rica, they boarded a bus and traveled to their hotel in the capital city of San Jose.
“The first day was all about getting acclimated to the travel,” said Castiglione. “You get your meal and you get rested so you can get up the next day and start fun excursions.”
The first day of touring, she said, the group traveled to the still-active Poas Volcano about an hour's trip from San Jose.“Everything is within an hour in Costa Rica. Everything's close. The farthest distance we had to ride on a bus was three hours,” she said.“The volcano is still active. It smelled completely of sulphur. You can smell the sulfuric acids,” she said.During their travels, the students had many chances to practice their Spanish, said Castiglione.“There was not a requirement to speak Spanish and because of all the tourism in Costa Rica, English is like a second language,” she said. “But they were told 'This is your opportunity to try it,' and my students took advantage every way they could.”It was especially easy to use Spanish, said Castiglione, on the day the students visited the Centrao Educativo School in San Jorge, a city about an hour and a half from San Jose.“They were all fifth and sixth graders,” she said. “It's not nearly as intimidating when you are talking to children.”“They played soccer with the students and got beaten badly,” Castiglione said. “The girls were doing dance games; that was fun. Castiglione, who is also the varsity girls soccer coach at Karns City High, said, “We are donating our used soccer balls to the school we visited and to our guide's children's school.”“For myself as a teacher, it is kind of nice to see your students converse in the language that you are teaching them,” she said.The students also visited a coffee plantation and kayaked on a man-made lake below the Arenal Volcano.“The best part about it was you didn't need a lot of experience,” said Castiglione about the kayaking.The weather throughout their stay was a subtropical 70s and 80s, she said. “But you knew every day it was going to rain for an hour to two hours. But you also knew you were going to see sunshine again.”
The trips to the volcanoes were physically demanding.“Traveling to the first volcano was a 1.5-mile hike uphill,” she said. “The second one was two miles with a steeper slope.”“The students were exercising Spanish and their legs,” she said. “The entire trip was demanding in one way or another, either mind or body, but in a good way that wasn't impossible to complete.”The group also went horseback riding, traveled to hot springs, visited the Santa Elana Biological Reserve to plant trees and went zip-lining in Monteverde, a small town that is a major ecotourism destination, she said.And though Castiglione isn't fond of heights, “I tried it and I would absolutely do it again.”Which, she said, is unusual considering the zip line was 800 yards long and over the tops of trees.“I was so proud of our students; every student did the zip-line adventure,” she said.“We did white-water rafting. I've been to Ohiopyle and this was way better than Ohiopyle,” Castiglione said.
One day the group traveled to the beach at Costal Puntarenas in the Manuel Antonio National Park.“We had six hours on the beach,” said Castiglione. “It was a day to just enjoy the sun and the water.”She said her students have been keeping in contact with some of their fellow students from Philadelphia via Facebook and Twitter.“I still keep in contact with the tour guide,” whose name is Jose Cocozza, she said.“This trip offered adventure. A trip to Europe, you get art, architecture and history that the United States doesn't have over here,” she said.“Costa Rica offered vegetation and scenery and a very adventurous setting,” she said. “There was white water rafting, kayaking, zip-lining.”“It offers them a chance to use the language that they've learned in an environment where they are not nervous, and the people foster the opportunity to speak,” she said. “They encourage the students to speak the language.”“It gave them opportunities to use what they learned in the classroom and to take what they learned and see success,” said Castiglione.
