Apr
1
Trip to Guatemala
I got an email this week from Doug Shivers, a language teacher who lives in Portland, Oregon. He’s got a program called “Teachers Learn Spanish,” where he organizes summer trips to Guatemala for teachers, social workers and students interested in studying Spanish and learning about Guatemalan culture.
There will be two sessions, one in June and the other in July. Each participant will receive 3 1/2 hours daily of private, one-on-one Spanish classes and get to live with a local Guatemalan family. There will also be planned excursions to Tikal, the Mayan temple ruins, and Lake Atitlán. The total cost of the program is $1550, not including airfare. For an extra fee, participants can get five hours of graduate credit from Portland State University.
Here’s what Doug says about the program:
This will be the fourth year that I have been doing the Teachers Learn Spanish program to Guatemala. Each year we have had between 15-20 participants. This has been a very good number, so I am limiting it to 20 students in each group. The absolute deadline is May 15 in order to leave enough time to orient the participants and inform the language school in Antigua.
We have had people on the program who have not spoken any Spanish at all as well as advanced speakers. Since each participant has his/her own private teacher, the lessons can be tailored to the needs of each person. We have also had children of participants from age 7 through high school and they have all had a great time and have learned Spanish quickly. There are teachers at the language school that are very good at teaching young children.
All of the U.S. teachers that have participated in the past have said that they have had so many new ideas for their own classrooms. Many of them have also said that after the Spanish classes they were able to converse with immigrant children in their classrooms and with the parents.
You can find more information on the Teachers Learn Spanish web site. If you’ve never been to Gautemala, I highly recommend it. I went there three years ago to work on a volunteer project and found the people very warm and welcoming and the landscapes beautiful.
Tikal ruins photo from travelblog.org
April 3rd, 2008 at 9:45 pm
Eleena — what part of Guatemala did you go to? and what kind of volunteer project did you engage in? I know so many people who have done volunteer work in Central America, and it sounds so appealing, especially since it’s such a beautiful region of the world, from what I have seen in pictures at least. I still haven’t been to South or Central America, but it is my dream to see all remnants of Mayan, Aztec, and Incan culture.
I also would just love to be able to experience speaking Spanish in a place besides Spain…
April 4th, 2008 at 11:02 am
I went to Antigua with a group of people to do a home-building project with a charity called Common Hope. I got to mix and lay cement. True manual labor!! Gives you a greater appreciation for all the luxuries and comforts many of us enjoy in North America and Europe. While there I also spent some time translating letters to English from Spanish. These were letters written by Guatemalan children sponsored by Common Hope (Familias de Esperanza) and the charity sends English translations of the letters to the child’s U.S. sponsor. It was fun!