Vestavia Spanish teacher reflects on Costa Rican immersion trip

Almost as soon as her plane landed once again on U.S. soil, Vestavia Hills High School Spanish teacher Lisa Garrison already was hard at work planning her next international adventure.

For eight days, Garrison traveled with 11 Spanish students from Liberty Park Middle School and the high school to Costa Rica as part of a language-immersion trip.

Brooke Izurieta, a Spanish teacher at Liberty Park, joined in, as did two other adult chaperones. 

Garrison said the trip, which was not sponsored by Vestavia City Schools and was instead privately organized by the teachers, allowed the students the opportunity to practice their Spanish language skills outside of the classroom.

“We can teach a language and talk to our students about the sights and sounds they might encounter in a foreign country, but we can’t reproduce what it’s actually like to be there from the inside of a classroom,” Garrison said.

Last fall, Garrison helped spearhead plans to create a Seal of Biliteracy program at the high school. The program, which is kicking off in the 2016-2017 school year, is open to students in their junior or senior year through an application and basic language proficiency requirements.

These international Spanish-immersion trips, which Garrison plans to continue in the years to come, go hand-in-hand with the aims of the Seal of Biliteracy program, she said. 

After all, the trip was much more than a sightseeing trip, she said. 

“It was a hands-on experience,” Garrison said. “We had a thematic lesson built in to each day so the students could use what they had learned in the classroom and apply it to real-life situations.” 

The trip began May 28, when the group traveled to Costa Rica and met up with their EF Educational Tours director. 

Each day, the group traveled to a different location within Costa Rica where they experienced a different aspect of the country and its people.

Garrison and the students spent a day in Guanacaste, where the day’s theme was “community and social entrepreneurship.” There, the students took part in a language lesson, explored a socially and environmentally sustainable project and learned to make local crafts.

On the third day, the students traveled to the Arenal region, where they spent two days learning about Costa Rican biodiversity as well as environmental sustainability and ecotourism. During their two days there, the students soared above the landscape on a zip-line canopy tour and volunteered for a few hours at a local eco-lodge. 

On days five and six, the group spent time in the Sarapiqui region, where they learned about the area’s youth and culture. The students interacted with local Costa Rican students and compared their teenage lives in each country. The group also took part in salsa lessons, ate a homemade dinner with locals, visited an organic farm where they harvested vegetables, learned how to prepare the vegetables during a cooking class and took a tour of a chocolate farm. 

On the seventh and final day of activities, the group visited San Jose, where they learned about Costa Rica’s early settlements and industry, traveled to a coffee plantation and participated on a team-building and leadership activity.

Garrison and the rest of the group returned stateside on June 4. 

“It was amazing,” Garrison said. “In the beginning, I was super nervous of course, traveling abroad with children who are not my own.”

Once the trip was underway, however, Garrison said her nerves quickly eased.

“This was just the perfect group of children,” she said. “It was a wonderful learning experience as a teacher. There’s no substitute in the classroom for actual travel.”

Garrison said she particularly enjoyed watching how the kids, who ranged from level-one to level-five Spanish students, grew over the eight days. 

“I watched as kids who at first would have been very shy and not taken the lead, suddenly were the first to speak, to take the initiative to introduce themselves and take charge. It might not have been perfect Spanish, but the students learned they were perfectly capable of communicating effectively,” she said. 

Garrison said throughout the trip, the students were encouraged to speak mostly in Spanish, though English did come into play when it was important to communicate safety specifics in cases such as the zip-line tour, for example.

Garrison said the enthusiasm was so great among the students that they were all asking when they could return even before they had left.

“I asked them to at least let me get home first,” she said with a laugh. 

Among her personal favorite experiences of the trip are the places they stayed that were so close to nature.

“The views were beautiful,” she said. “We saw tree frogs that glow in the dark, monkeys and all types of birds.”

Garrison said she also particularly enjoyed the visit to a local elementary school, where the local students provided a guided tour of their campus.

“By the end of the day, everyone had broken out into a game of soccer,” Garrison said. “Everyone joined in. I only wish we could have spent some more time with them, meeting teachers, students and watching the students interact.”

Garrison said she’s already busy “plotting and planning” the next immersion trip. 

“These trips have to be a regular part of my life now, because of the impact it had on the kids and on me as a teacher,” she said. “We saw and did some amazing things together.”