Nandayure
is a small mountainous region of about 10,000 people in northwestern Costa
Rica. Although located in the province of Guanacaste, home to many of Costa
Rica’s most popular tourist beaches, the region of Nandayure lacks both tourist
attractions and for that matter any other non-agricultural industry. Most
families are either directly or indirectly dependent on the main crops of the
region, coffee, oranges, and cattle and hence at the mercy of the ever changing
weather.
The positive impact of a JumpStart camp on
the Nandayure region would be diverse and long lasting. The main goal of the
JumpStart camp is to improve the English ability of Costa Rican children about
to enter high school. This means that most kids are between 12 and 13 years
old, an incredibly formative age in which many lifelong habits, both good and
bad, are acquired. Each student will be in a class of 20 students for 3 hours a
day, Monday through Friday. By the end of the fourth and final week of camp
each student will have had 60 hours of English instruction with a native TEFL
trained English speaker. If given the opportunity to start another camp in
Nandayure the camp of 20 students would have 3 native English teachers. The
critical aspect of this camp is while all high school students in Costa Rica study
English, only about half actually study it in elementary school. This creates a
gap between students entering high school with a solid foundation in English
and those entering without the slightest knowledge of English. As a high school
English teacher I have personally witnessed the frustration and lack of
confidence experienced by students who did not previously study English,
especially when they compare themselves to their peers, some of whom have
studied English since kindergarten. These frustrated students are already at
risk students, the fact that they came from a community that is too poor to
afford an elementary school English teacher means that most of the students
themselves live in poverty. As they become more disinterested and
disenfranchised in school they are much more likely to drop out of the
educational system without a diploma and are then destined to spend the rest of
their lives working menial jobs for little pay.
Once at high school, English becomes even
more important as most students in the region go to a technical high school in
which they can study tourist related trades such as (what do they study there?
TR) While as a whole young people in Costa Rica are experiencing an
unemployment rate of 22%, one of the highest in Latin America, jobs for English
speakers are abundant. In fact, many employers are now starting to post job
openings in English in the newspapers in order to make sure only English
speakers apply. With English, students can then choose a wide range of jobs,
whether it be in the tourist industry such as a waiter or guide, or in the
burgeoning call center industry prevalent in Costa Rica. If they pass the final
high school exam, of which the English section is the most commonly failed
subject, they can get scholarships to go to a university. In other words,
English can break the chain of poverty that they might have thought themselves
destined to continue.
JumpStart camps are meant to give their
students a solid understanding of English and thus let them start high school
at the same level as their other peers. I personally did a camp last year in
Nandayure. I had an incredible mix of students who for some reason or another
desperately needed to attend this camp. There were some students who came from
very remote homes who never had access to English education, such as the twins
Alexander and Alejandro who have to walk 45 minutes to get to the nearest road
and went to an elementary school of only 9 students. There were two other
students, Alex and Wilber, who had experience with English but are mentally
retarded and needed a basic review of the concepts they learned at school, and
finally, a neighbor of mine, Angelica. She comes from an extremely poor family.
Her father is an illiterate alcoholic farmer and can’t count past 100. Her
family, including her 3 brothers and sister, subsist on almost only the food
they can grow. As my neighbors for over a year, I have never seen the kids buy
any candy, soda, chips, or anything else most kids in town buy. I have only
seen the mother buy rice and laundry detergent. I taught Angelica the year
before the camp and saw that she was having a hard time in school, especially
suffering from low esteem. She went through a major growths pert, becoming very
tall but very thin. She was often bullied at school being called “ugly”,
“stupid”, and “clumsy” and I was told by her mom that she had anger and self
harm issues at home. While I could stop the bullying of her in my class, other
teachers had an apathetic attitude towards bullying of any kind and did not
intervene on any bullying unless it became overtly violent. Although she
studied English in elementary school her knowledge of such was very low. In the
beginning of my camp she was still bullied and so I decided to do a bullying
discussion at the camp, something promoted and common in all JumpStart camps. I
firmly stated that if I see any bullying in or outside the classroom I would
then write a note detailing the incident to their parents and the parents would
need to sign this note in order for the child to return to camp. If I caught
them doing it again then they were immediately kicked out of camp, no questions
asked. For the rest of the camp I only caught one student bullying and after
her parents signed the note she stopped bullying completely. I then saw
Angelica’s confidence increase. I remember being ecstatic seeing her return
from recess smiling, out of breath and tired because it meant she was actually
playing tag with the other students and not sitting in the corner by herself.
She became good friends with another shy girl named Maria and her English also
improved. She went from only responding to memorized sentences such as “How are
you?” “I’m fine.” To actually creating complex sentences such as “My favorite
food is pizza, what is your mom’s favorite food?”. As her English teacher in
high school, I have seen her make many new friends and actively and confidently
participate in my classes. Angelica’s experience pretty much sums up my
feelings towards JumpStart camps and why I am trying so hard to get the proper
funding to do another camp. It’s more than helping students learn English, it
gives them a chance to enter high school confident, with a strong sense of self
worth and excited about what lays ahead for them after high school graduation.
Because JumpStart is a free camp, the
students pay nothing to attend and therefore we are dependent on donations in
order to do another camp this January. You can sponsor a student for $200 or
the whole camp for $4,000, however any amount is greatly appreciated. If you
would like to sponsor a student we would love to send you a picture and info
about that student and his or her progress throughout the camp.
