#sara crouch

The Community Engagement Experience

by Sara Crouch

Each year during their first semester, the freshman class ofLIU Globalembarks on a week-long community engagement project with different organizations all across Costa Rica. Students are given a selection of projects to choose from and they are matched with their top picks. This year there were seven different community engagement projects that student groups participated in including: observing and teaching with Centro Espiral Mana, an English school; studying natural medicine with the New Dawn Center, a tropical medicinal herb farm; working on a family run biodynamic farm; living and working with the Boruca community, a rural indigenous community in the mountains; picking coffee and participating in other community activities with ASOMOBI, a women’s coffee cooperative; working with animals at the Costa Rica Animal Rescue Center; and volunteering with the Sea Turtle Conservation Project to monitor local sea turtle nests, the center’s hatchery and turtle releases. These projects were located all across the country, from the mountains of Talamanca to Montezuma Beach, with students traveling and participating in small groups.

For my community engagement project, I went toCentro Espiral Mana, an English learning school in El INVU, a rural town in the province of Alajuela, Costa Rica. Centro Espiral Mana (CEM) offers English teaching certification courses for potential teachers from all around the world, English teacher training certification courses, Saturday youth English classes, English workshops for visiting groups, and free community English classes Monday through Thursday night taught by current student teachers or volunteers. Centro Espiral Mana is a program focused on interactive education and the promotion of creativity and transformative learning in the classroom. The school encourages teachers to use a wide variety of activities and simulated situations, giving students a well-rounded and fun English education experience. The most important principle of the CEM approach to education is the idea that the cultivation of community and relationship in the classroom must occur before learning can happen. This principle is ingrained into student teachers during their teacher training and is evident in their class activities as well as the general atmosphere of Centro Espiral Mana and its relationship with the El INVU community.

During our engagement with Centro Espiral Mana, we lived with host families in rural El INVU and participated in a variety of activities and learning exercises in the community and Centro Espiral Mana. Each night we would participate and observe the community English classes so as to see the educational approach of Centro Espiral Mana and its impact on students. During our days in El INVU we participated in a host of other activities. On our very first day, we solely participated in the night English class after traveling to El INVU earlier in the day. The second day, we participated in an English workshop at the center with Costa Ricans from a local technical college and visited an English class at a local elementary school, Educativo Carmen Lidia Castro Rodriguez, where we led activities and learning exercises for the kids alongside their English teacher. On the third day, another student and I interviewed five of the 18 Nicaraguan English teachers studying at CEM about their opinions on the relationship of language and culture for our Global Studies research paper.  Later in the day, we participated in a chocolate workshop the center planned for us led by one of the very first graduates of Centro Espiral Mana’s English classes, Ishmael. On the fourth day, we visited a preschool in La Fortuna called Cataplinkis where several of the teacher trainers from CEM work during the day. We observed a class of students with a focus on the educational and conflict resolution techniques used by Maggie, the teacher. On the fifth day, we participated in a Stress Reduction workshop with a local woman, Kinga, and observed a teacher training workshop on “Responding to Inaccuracies.” On the last day, we interviewed Mary Scholl, the founder of Centro Espiral Mana, and observed CEM’s Saturday youth English class. For the first four nights of the project, we also participated and observed the community English classes that took place at Centro Espiral Mana from six to nine.

As I mentioned before, another student and I were actually able to relate our experience with Centro Espiral Mana to our upcoming final research paper for our class “Foundations of Global Studies.” For this paper, pairs of students chose a topic related to culture or environment to research and present their findings on. My partner and I chose to research the relationship between language and culture, specifically the impact of English on Spanish-speaking culture. We interviewed five Nicaraguan English teachers about their thoughts on the influence of language on culture and vice versa. Our initial concern coming into our research and these interviews were that teaching English was a new form of neo-imperialism in Nicaragua and other Spanish speaking countries, thus impacting the culture of these countries. We found that this was not the case. The teachers we spoke to said that English is solely a skill for the workforce, left behind when they walk into their homes where Spanish is the familial language. They did not believe English impacted their culture but rather is a helpful skill for many Nicaraguans in the workforce. To them, learning English is an economic investment for Nicaraguans, but not a necessity. The only mildly critical response we received about the impact of English pertained to how many of the well-paying jobs in Nicaragua are with the United States or foreign companies. This teacher said that he wished more Nicaraguans made up the CEOs or management of large businesses in Nicaragua, negating the need for English. This being said, he agreed that at the moment knowing English offers Nicaraguans more opportunity for higher paying jobs. I still have my concerns about the dominance of Netflix and American media in other countries, but I do feel better about the idea of teaching English after discussing it with people who are actually affected by the push for English education. They are not concerned that English is damaging their cultural identity, so neither am I.

Community engagement projects are a key learning tool in LIU Global curriculum. They force students out of their comfort zone and out of the classroom. It is a way for us as students to have real-world experience with the subjects we’re interested in, see local solutions to global issues, and be exposed to new fields of study. In my case, my partner and I were able to relate this community engagement project for one class with an assignment from another, illustrating how linked the different parts of the LIU curriculum are. My project with Centro Espiral Mana also allowed me to learn skills and principles that I would never be able to learn in a classroom and gave me invaluable experience working in the field of international education. Through this experience, I was also able to build my intercultural awareness as I interacted with teachers from all over the Americas as well as a rural Costa Rican community. Centro Espiral Mana served as a beautiful example of global camaraderie and intercultural awareness with the intention of working towards a shared goal - effective language education around the world. Additionally, this experience resulted in my discoveries of new interests, goals and social issues and the creative solutions to them. My time with Centro Espiral Mana allowed me to realize a new passion for adult education as well as language education. I had never worked with either of these forms of education, adult or language, but found that they are truly inspiring and can be a lot of fun. It reminded me of the joy that learning a new language can be and has motivated me to consider teaching English internationally to both children and adults. It also inspired me to study more on educational approaches and pedagogies as well as education policy internationally.  What are the approaches to language learning used most commonly in the world? Are all public education systems set up like the US - with traditional classes? What is the current international education policy, if there is such a thing? These are the questions I’ve been inspired to find answers to after participating in my first community engagement project with LIU Global.

This was the first of two independent engagement projects that students participate in their freshman year. Next semester, we will embark on another such project but for two weeks rather than one. This next project will be a research engagement in which students research a specific question of their choice in the community or organization they visit.