Off the Beaten Path

“I never expected to find myself moving hundreds of bricks on a path in a national forest in Costa Rica with you!” one student said to me on our first day of service work during our spring break trip this year. I laughed, reflecting that she was right, this was such a unique experience to have with students in a foreign country, both for them and for me! This spring break, 17 students signed up for a service trip to Costa Rica. These students were sophomores to seniors, and many were not from the United States, but all of them willingly agreed to spend their spring break doing something so completely different and outside of their comfort zone. I agreed to this, too, and I learned so much about our students and myself in this experience, just as the students learned so much as well. 

I have always been a big proponent of both experiential learning and service work to help students get outside of themselves and better understand who they are and how they fit into the world around them. This year's trip was organized by Rustic Pathways, an organization that centers service projects at the heart of all of their trips. We left school late on Friday evening, traveling overnight to arrive at our home for the next 12 days, almost 24 hours after we left school. We spent our time in La Fortuna, learning about the culture and the place through various activities and service projects. We learned about the animals and the environment at the Asis WildLife Project, understanding the impact of owning monkeys and wild birds, and how they care for these rescued animals every day. We spent several days at a local school helping to build new parking spaces so that teachers have somewhere to park and students can be picked up, without walking in the mud and the rain during the rainy season. We spent a day repairing a path in the national forest to make it more welcoming to guests, as a large part of the economy is based on tourist visits. Additionally, we were able to enjoy the beauty and opportunities that La Fortuna has to offer, including hot springs, zip lining, kayaking on Arenal Lake, and visiting Rio Celeste Waterfall and the Maleku tribe, a group of indigenous people in Costa Rica. 

Throughout the course of the trip, I saw students come together to mix concrete, figuring out the way to work as efficiently as possible using each other’s strengths to get the job done. I saw them struggle to communicate with the Costa Rican students at the school, trying out their little bit of Spanish to make a connection with the kids in front of them. I saw them think about what from their culture they wanted to share with the students and what they could conceivably explain to a group of excited second graders, again in Spanish. I saw them struggle to figure out how to communicate with each other to move their kayak in the direction they wanted to go, and maybe realize that though they were happy to try it, kayaking wasn’t really for them.

I learned what questions to ask to ensure the students were prepared for what was coming the next day. I learned how to navigate long days with a hugely diverse group of students. I started to learn how to recognize the student needs, and my own, to make sure that we were all able to enjoy all the opportunities in front of us. And I learned what each student could contribute, and how they impacted all of us in the group. One student noted at the end of the trip that for them, the value was in working with those on the trip, and learning who they were in the midst of an uncomfortable situation like digging up rocks to fill in a hole. In the end, it isn’t really about moving bricks.