Evaluating my Peace Corps Service (PC style)

This blog was started in 2011 to document and share our experience with Peace Corps.  Our time as Peace Corps volunteers has come to an end.  I am struggling with wrapping my head around this fact.  While I plan and dream about our lives as grad students and full time employees again, I am struggline to grasp the fact that we are not returning to Costa Rica.  We have spent more time as a married couple and college graduates as Volunteers living in Costa Rica than in the States.

Officially Peace Corps Volunteers

The Hubs and I have discussed what we miss about our site, Santa Cruz.  Claro que sí, we miss the Ticos and Volunteers we have bonded with the past two years.  But thank goodness for technology because we are able to stay in contact with many of them.  But we also miss walking around town, the hospitality of Ticos, and their attention to detail.  We miss speaking Spanish and having a flexible work schedule.    

They let us all in 

As we closed up our projects, my counterpart (the local who I work along side with the whole two years of service) and reflected on what was effective in the projects we led together.  I was a Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) Volunteer.  So my primary project was to aid local educators in improving their teaching methodology and their confidence in English.  My counterpart and I came up with different ways to achieve the TEFL goals.  We successfully implemented spelling bees that are now required for all schools to participate in.  We led 9 conversation clubs so that EVERY English teacher in my region had an opportunity to speak in English for 40 hours (and get a pay raise) that included mini workshops on teaching methodology.  

My counterpart and I 

Peace Corps also encourages volunteers to do projects that are outside of our primary project.  With my background in education, many of my secondary projects (projects outside my TEFL project) had to do with education.  I created a teaching blog aimed at TEFL teachers, privately tutored students, and co-led a (community conversation club) for young professionals.  I also led a women’s workout group for a couple of months. 

Throughout our service we were required to report our activities quarterly: who was involved in them and what was successful.  Because of this and reflecting on my service, I have evaluated my time there.  While my secondary projects are harder to evaluate, I still deem them successful. 

Our community conversation club 

The spelling bee demonstrated the importance of English and increased teachers’ and students’ confidence, vocabulary, and pronunciation. 

Interregional Spelling Bee 2013

The teachers’ conversation club allowed teachers the opportunity to learn new activities to use in their class,  to get a raise, to practice their English, and to get together as a department and share ideas.

Two of the conversation clubs

My teaching blog has allowed me to reach teachers that I don’t get an opportunity to see but once or twice a year.  It has also been a one stop shop for resources for the lessons they have to teach. 

The main student we have worked with has improved his grades and increased his confidence in speaking English.

The community conversation club has opened doors for job opportunities for some of our participants. 

The women’s workout group was a space for women to workout without feeling scrutinized.  It taught them basic exercises they can do at home. The workout group also gave them accountability partners to take care of themselves. 

While I haven’t completed a giant project or raised thousands of dollars for a project, I still believe my time in Costa Rica as a Peace Corps volunteer was extremely successful.  I believe I achieved the three goals of Peace Corps and the three of Teaching English as a Foreign Language.    

Success is not deemed by the size of the project but the effect on the person. - me

And just like that, they are letting us out

Recounting my Peace Corps service

2 years 3 months.

27 months.

7.6 earthquake.

2 host families.

9 conversation clubs.

50 spelling bees.

8 cluster mates.

3 conference presentations.

36 Monday tutoring sessions.

2 sets of visitors.

3 trips home.

4 countries visited.

1 manicure and pedicure.

3 broken fans.

4 parades.

14 beaches.

3 Peace Corps trainings.

2 project working team meetings.

2 birthdays.
1 counterpart. 

2 graduations.

3 babies.

2 bee stings.

1 wedding band cut off.

3 allergic reactions.

141 teachers.

164 runs.

2 stolen items.

2 blogs.   

120 hours of language training

68 hours of Teaching English as a Foreign Language training

3 good bye parties

7 spelling bee meetings

Countless laughs

Countless hours waiting for a bus

Countless hours on a bus

1 (almost) Returned Peace Corps Volunteer

Our first day of being a PCV 

The first time we met our counterparts 

Content Wednesday

Today I am overwhelmed with gratitude about 

random facebook chats with friends 

dinners at my counterpart's house and playing with Mia the puppy 

a laughing husband in his school's uniform 

Spelling Bee meetings 

surprises from the host family 

Grateful Monday

Today I am grateful for 

the people that fill this office 

Beautiful views on my runs 

Landmarks directing visitors to our house 

Quick trips to Liberia for sushi, a movie, and air conditioning 

Movie rental store 

Random dinner nights with friends 

We went to a coyolera to try vino coyol 

Vino coyol is made from trees 

Thankful Tuesday

Today I am thankful for

Conversations between spelling bee kiddos from different schools.  

puppy time 

walks into town (they put molasses on the road to help with erosion and they dust)

grocery shopping and knowing the employees (notice how they put the carts in)

Gratitude Monday

The Hubs' Little Sister gave me a book by Ann Voskamp for Christmas a few years ago.  I devoured this book, and immediately started documenting the things that make me happy as Mrs. Voskamp encourages.  Then today I ran across this blog post by this cute couple's blog.   And just reading the short post about what she was grateful for put a smile on my face.

I have been wondering how I could document all my photos and memories from my Peace Corps   experience.  This blog is my story of this experience.  And while most post are dedicated to big events like the completion of conversation clubs, the next few will be about the little things I have come to cherish about my Costa Rica.

 This is my favorite road to walk or run down.  It is covered by overhanging trees and has a great view of the mountains. I like it so much I made my in-laws walk down it when they visited instead of taking the shorter path.  (It is not always this desolate, the Hubs was almost knocked over by a car on one of his runs here)

Seeing this dog everywhere.  Meet Three Tone.  He is a dog that we have seen wandering the streets for the last two years.  He was named as a joke towards me because I named a similar looking dog Two Tone when his coat was obviously  black, white, and brown.  (The Hubs and I tend to come up with names for random animals)

OUR ice cream shop.  The local Volunteers have started calling it that since this is the only place we take visitors for ice cream and smoothies.  The owner is extremely nice (he often gives me the leftovers from my small smoothie) and the prices are cheaper than others.   

Posting an Update

Who can believe we are at the end of January???  I thought the days and months were supposed to drag on after the fun of the holiday season!

February means the Hubs and I have been living in Costa Rica for two years!  We moved February 22, 2012 (the Little Brother's birthday).  February also means that we official have 3 months left in our quaint little town.  With only 3 months left we can no longer take vacation (which is fine since we used all 48 days+ 2 leave without pay days).  It means we are finally following through with promises to visit friends' communities.  Finishing up projects, helping our counterparts prepare for the year without us (we have some major things happening in our school and area!), enjoying our 1 1/2 hour bus ride to the beach, fresh fruit, walking everywhere, and saying good bye.

But I want to save the official reflect and goodbye posts till a later date.  Today's post is to fill you in on what we have been doing in January.

January is still our summer vacation time in Costa Rica.  The Hubs and I had no real plans on how to spend it.  Many of our fellow volunteers held a camp called Jump Start. Jump Start is a month long intensive English camps for incoming 7th graders.  High schools in Costa Rica start with 7th grade.  While Costa Rica is striving to be bilingual, with a focus on English, many of our elementary schools do not have English classes.  This is because of funding, smaller schools do not have the funding to have anything but the regular teacher(s).  So Jump Start is to help offset the inequality of English in the 7th grade schools.  Since many schools feed into the same high school, there will be students who have had the full 6 years of English, no English, and somewhere in between.  The camps are currently led by Peace Corps Volunteers (PCV) and supported by public school teachers.  The camp is free to all students who make their way to camp by foot, bike, or bus.  The students receive fun and engaging lessons on basic English, and they walk away for the experience with irreplaceable confidence and knowledge of the language.

Picture from a Jump Start last year

The Hubs and I decided to be more in a supportive role for these camps instead of hosting our own.  There is a camp with 40 students being hosted at the large high school across town by our geographically closest volunteer (she is about 15 minute bus ride away).  She is helped by a couple from the States (who willingly paid to come and volunteer in a camp AND live with a Tico family) as well as two Tico teachers.  The Hubs has been going to the camp when he can to relieve the PCV of teaching so she can accomplish any administrative tasks she is called to do.  We also visited another PCV, who lives and works about 1 1/2 hour bus ride away, to interview her little darlings.  Part of this project is to track the progress of these students.  So all little darlings are interviewed at the beginning of camp, again at the end, and possibly throughout the school year.

January is a busy month in Santa Cruz.  We have our annual fiestas which include fair rides, bull riding, vendors, concerts, loud music in general, greasy good food, and drinking.  We tried to go out everyday at some point.  Sadly, we did not cheer on the bull watch the bulling riding very much this year.  But we enjoyed seeing friends and volunteers while eating and laughing until our hearts were content.

Again from last year.  I need to get on this picture taking thing

We celebrated our favorite six year old's birthday.  Our neighbors'/landlords' son turned six this month.  We partied hard.  haha  He loves the payasos (see picture below), so we had a parade with them leading up to the party area.  We dressed as good Guanacasticos do and "helped" the kids get the candy from the piñata.

Those tall, masked things are payasos

CANDY!

That joyful boy in the middle is the birthday boy with his family and friends

Last week we spent time in the capitol for a spelling bee meeting with the regional English leaders and for the National Teaching English Conference.

Three years ago, the spelling bee was a dream and now we are preparing for an opportunity for a nation wide competition next year.  We are also readying everything to give the responsibility to the leaders and teachers soon, oh so soon.  What an opportunity to talk to the leaders and vice minister about a project our organization created!  Many leaders were excited to get this project started in their district.  My counterpart and I even got to share our experience of leading 24 schools in our first ever spelling bee last year!  

This is my second year to present at the NTEC Conference.  I thoroughly enjoyed it!  Last year, the Hubs and I co-presented, but this year he decided he would rather volunteer with some of the behind the scenes things.  This year I had one presentation on classroom procedures and the other on classroom management.  I had a blast (and the Hubs even said I was goofy and funny-win)!  The teachers were responsive and full of ideas.  What a great experience all around. 

Now that we are saying "Adios!" to January, we are welcoming Febuary with the annual Super Bowl party.  Don't worry we will be streaming the game live on a computer to see the commercials.  Then we will help with a few Jump Start activities next week as they finish out their camps.  Beach trips are in order this month.  And our Close of Service (COS) conference to round out the ever short month.  

Here's to 2014!  

Let's Start Talking

It is done.  Done-zo!  I cannot believe it.  What will I do now?  I have just completed my eighth and final conversation club.

What is a conversation club you ask?  Well, a conversation is a group that gets foreign language learners speaking in their second language. While conversation clubs can take different forms, the ones I facilitated were a five day credited course (meaning: the country's Ministry of Education provided the teachers who successfully completed the course with a small raise) spread out over five weeks.  The conversation club included fun activities to get participants talking in the morning and then mini workshops in the afternoon about teaching strategies.

The participants were teachers from our region.  We separated them according to what grades they taught.  I had four groups of primary teachers and four groups of secondary teachers. The groups were mixed speaking levels though.

The mixed speaking levels allowed for the participants to lead the discussions and activities.  My goal as facilitator was to provide the activities, encourage speaking, and answer any questions they had.  It was wonderful to see the participants stepping up and leading the activities and discussions.  However, with mixed speaking level groups there was the problem of the higher level speakers dominating the conversations.  While that did happen sometimes, I tried to combat the problem by giving specific speaking roles to participants, requiring a certain amount of times to talk each day, and asking the quieter ones to lead (after they ensured me they understood what is needed to be done).  I tried to never put the participants on the spot.  I would write and say questions, instructions, etc. then allow time from participants to discuss their responses with their partners or write them down.  I wanted to build the participants confidence and teach them strategies for doing the same in their classroom.

The afternoons were focused on teaching strategies.  That included lesson planning backwards, classroom management, classroom procedures, activity development, and pronunciation.  Again, as the facilitator I did not want to dominate this time.  The mini workshops were a discussion based format to encourage sharing strategies and tips with their fellow teachers.

The conversation clubs, along with the Spelling Bee (Part 1, 2, 3) were my babies.  I dedicated most of past 1 1/2 years to conversation club and Spelling Bee.

With these clubs, I was able to see HUGE improvements in some of my teachers.  I had a handful of teachers who were too nervous to talk the first days and by the end of the course was volunteering to led activities or dominating the conversation (I had to ask one of these teachers to let some of the other participants talk).  I enjoyed getting to know the 100ish teachers through this course.  I have made some friends for life.

These courses brought together teachers to share ideas, tips, and practice English who normally don't have this opportunity.  I would deem these 8 conversation clubs a success.  

The Hubs and I are in the last few months of our service.  I wanted to document my projects so I can show people what I did during my time in Peace Corps.  As we wrap up our service, there will be a few more posts about what we have done, plan to do, and just general things about our host country and service.