In this interview, we hear from Tracey Spaugh. Tracey is a Peace Corps volunteer working as a Education volunteer in Costa Rica. What Tracey shares gives us a better understanding of the work volunteers do. We learn about the challenges, rewards, and personal growth that happens from volunteering in a new place. Tracey talks about living in a different country, working with local people, and dealing with surprise situations. Join us as we learn about Tracey’s journey and see how volunteering with Peace Corps can change lives.
Table of Contents
- Volunteer Experience and Motivation
- Living Arrangements and Cultural Integration
- Surprises and Challenges
- Advice and Support
- Practical Tips and Language Learning
- Final Thoughts
Volunteer Experience and Motivation
1. Tell us more about serving as an Education volunteer in Costa Rica:
The Education program focuses on English education and we are divided into Secondary English Education and Primary English Education. I am a Secondary English Education volunteer so my principal job is to be what we would consider a middle school/high school English teacher.
My site is incredibly small. It is actually the smallest site in my cohort. My school only has 250 students from 7th through 12th grade and I teach every grade. The unique aspect of our project in Costa Rica is that the vast majority of the high schools are technical high schools that teach students a professional specialty at the same time that they study their traditional high school classes. My school has 4 specialties: web design, accounting, tourism for food and beverages, and agriculture. I am currently completing my second year and I have had the opportunity to work with each specialty.
The beautiful thing about serving as an Education volunteer is that it is incredibly collaborative. I do not teach alone. I always work with other teachers because a primary goal of this project is to improve teachers’ command of English and of English teaching. On a normal day, I teach two 4-hour (The time goes by faster than you think and my counterparts and I are always wishing for more time.) conversational English classes. I also teach two adult night classes two times a week to be able to interact with the adult community.
When I am not teaching, I generally play soccer, volleyball, or ping-pong with the children or participate in some school event or activity. Events include student-teacher soccer matches, cultural events, or art/science fairs.
2. What motivated you to join the Peace Corps and choose Costa Rica?
The highlight of my time in college was my study abroad programs in the Middle East. It allowed me to experience new cultures and learn a new language. After this experience, I knew that I wanted to continue traveling and immersing myself in new cultures. One specific program was the Critical Language Scholarship in Oman where I studied Arabic during the summer. One of my classmates was an RPCV from Rwanda and it was incredible to listen to his experience as a volunteer. I returned to my university to finish my degree and I began to prepare my application for Morocco.
My plan changed thanks to the pandemic. I am currently in Costa Rica but I did not choose to come here. I applied to the Peace Corps in March of 2020, when everything was beginning to shut down because of the Covid pandemic. It really was not a good time to apply, but I did it anyway. My original goal was to apply to go to Morocco due to my experience in the Middle East, but I felt that would be too restrictive given the current circumstances. The only application options available were to choose a region or to apply to go anywhere, and I chose to go anywhere. The only stipulation that I put was that I preferred to go to a country that speaks Arabic or Spanish because I wanted to improve the languages that I already spoke.
After waiting for 2 years and being placed in two other countries, I was finally told that I was going to be serving in Costa Rica. The reality is that I was extremely lucky because they have been an incredible experience.
Living Arrangements and Cultural Integration
3. Tell us more about your home situation:
I live with a host family. In Costa Rica, you have to live with a host family for a total of 9 months. 3 months in PST training and 6 months in site. After that, you have the option to move. In my case, I decided to stay with a host family for a series of reasons. The main reason is that I feel that my cultural integration and language learning would be limited if I lived alone. I spend time with my host family, eat with them, and watch movies with them. I have learned a lot about Costa Rican culture and have greatly improved my Spanish by living with a host family.
The other reason that I continue to stay with a host family is simple practicality. As an Education volunteer, we are constantly busy and it would be difficult to take on the responsibility of food preparation and maintaining a home, while working full-time. I also live in a very rural site. The houses available are for sale and not for rent and there is no large grocery store in town. Most people go to the neighboring town to go grocery shopping and that would be difficult for me given the bus schedule. The bus leaves at 5:30 AM and does not return until 5 PM, which would make grocery shopping difficult.
Overall, I highly suggest staying with a host family if possible. You will learn so much about the culture and the language. Many volunteers become part of the families, and that is certainly my situation.
4. Any memorable experiences or interactions you’ve had?
Sometimes the most memorable experiences are the simplest. During school, we have two 20-minute breaks. This is the time that I play games or sports with my students. We play soccer, volleyball, ping-pong, and UNO, and it is always my favorite part of the day. The most memorable part of this has been the change of roles that occur. In class, I am their teacher but that is not the case when I am playing with them. The students treat me as one of their own and they have even taken the initiative to teach me how to be a better player at all of these games.
An unexpected result of this has been that the local teachers have been getting more involved as well. The school is including more games in the events and the teachers are beginning to get more involved with students, reducing the distance between them and gaining more respect from the students.
Surprises and Challenges
5. What has surprised you most about Education challenges in Costa Rica?
The biggest surprise for me has been the amount of class days that students lose. Teachers are never able to finish the curriculums because students lose a lot of days due to holidays, mandatory activities, testing, and the like. This makes it difficult at times because volunteers may not see some classes for weeks at a time.
This has made me change my view of my current role as a volunteer. I no longer focus on finishing the curriculum. My current goal is simply to make sure that students’ English levels are better at the end of the year than they were at the beginning. It makes me become more personable and adaptable because I must know all my students and be able to adapt to a challenging schedule.
6. What challenges did you face while working on Education projects?
I work with adults two nights a week. The challenges with them are absences because the vast majority of them work and have lives outside of the night school. Attendance is a constant issue because they miss a lot of classes. My response to this has been very similar to my response above. I get to know my students and I try to tailor my teaching to each one of them. It’s challenging, but being adaptable is the only solution that we have.
7. Could you share some of the secondary projects you have been involved?
Language Exchange with Students in the US
I have been involved in two large secondary projects. The first one has been a virtual language exchange between my school and a STEM school in Chattanooga, TN. My students are studying English and the students from Tennessee are studying Spanish. My counterpart, the Spanish teacher, and I have worked together to arrange virtual meetings between the American students and my students so that they can exchange culture and language abilities.
My students have really enjoyed this program because they have gotten the opportunity to not only learn about American culture and English, but they have gotten the chance to take initiative and teach the American children about their culture and their language. I absolutely love to watch one of the students with the lowest English levels teach the American students because she is always so proud of herself afterward.
“F1 in Schools” National Competition
The second project that I was part of was an F1 in Schools competition. F1 in Schools is an international STEM competition where students compete to design an aerodynamic model car, create a brand identity, and present the process in English. I was an English advisor and worked with web design, graphic design, and English teachers to support the students in this massive project.
The students won the regional competition and did extremely well in the nationals. It was a process where everyone had to learn quickly. As someone with no engineering experience, I had to learn about physics and the like very quickly. This project has shown me that volunteers should go in with few expectations because one never knows what they will be involved in.
Advice and Support
8. What advice would you give to someone considering serving as an Education volunteer in Costa Rica?
Have very few expectations because every volunteer will have a different experience. I live in a very rural site, but this is not the case for every volunteer. The closest volunteer to me lives in a rather large site and his school is the biggest in my cohort. Over 1800 students compared to my 250. Even though we are an hour away from each other, we live in completely different worlds.
Be prepared to learn, especially if you are in secondary education. Since we are in technical high school, we are constantly surrounded by technical vocabulary and topics. This can be incredibly challenging if you do not come from a business or technological background like me. I am definitely an international relations guy. You will not only be teaching your students, you will be learning from them.
As I mentioned before, we lose a lot of class days due to a myriad of reasons. This can be difficult because most of us definitely came to make a difference and that can be difficult without class. My suggestion is to remember that we are not only here because of our narrow projects. We are also here to integrate, learn, and share cultures. These activities are incredibly important to our work, even if they have nothing to do with English.
9. What skills or qualities do you think are most important for a Education volunteer?
Volunteers should be adaptable and willing to learn. As volunteers, we are in new environments with different cultures and languages. I am constantly learning new words, new cultural practices, and new topics in the school and community. I have had to learn to adapt and to be open to new things.
Patience is a virtue that has helped me a lot. I have faced many challenges and I am sure that I will continue to face more. Patience has allowed me to take the time to overcome these challenges or sometimes just to accept them.
Do not take yourself too seriously. Yes, we are here to make a difference and to learn, but we also need to be here to enjoy ourselves. Take time to travel, to play, and to learn new topics that are interesting to you. It is not all about work.
Make connections with your fellow PCVs and take time to spend time with them. Even though we live in communities, we feel alone at times and want to connect to fellow Americans. Our best resources are our fellow PCVs. For example, I watch Supernatural with my best friend here multiple times a week and this is helpful to reconnect with fellow Americans.
10. How has the Peace Corps training helped you during your service?
PST is incredibly important for volunteers. It is difficult and can feel long at times, but it will help you when you get to site. Please, take advantage of the language classes and host families during PST. Depending on the site, there will be few people who speak English. I consistently use Spanish at site to communicate with fellow teachers, students, and community members. It simply is not possible to integrate into my site without Spanish.
IST is when we present our CASA reports, which are essentially research papers on our sites. Yes, they are a lot of work but it is so rewarding when we get to IST to share our site and to learn about others. It really puts the work that we are doing as a group perspective. It never stops us from comparing sites (this is always a Peace Corps tradition), but it does teach us that our sites are extremely different and that we are living in our own situations.
MST has something similar called the project fair. We present on our various secondary projects, which allows us to essentially steal ideas from each other. At this point in service, nobody in the Peace Corps knows our sites better than we do so we can choose ideas that work for us and we can hopefully show ideas that work for others.
Practical Tips and Language Learning
11. Anything that you packed or didn’t pack that you’d like to tell future Costa Rica volunteers?
Pack a good umbrella or rain jacket. Costa Rica has a rainy season and a dry season. Volunteers will definitely need an umbrella or a rain jacket. The other thing that I would bring would be a sweater or a jacket. My site is incredibly hot, but I have gotten very accustomed to the heat here. Places like San Jose or places with air conditioning often make me extremely cold because I have lost my tolerance to the cold.
12. How has learning the language been?
In Costa Rica, we learn Spanish. The country has a language requirement for application so applicants should have some exposure to the language. I would suggest practicing Spanish before arriving. Duolingo, reading the news in Spanish, or watching TV in Spanish are good ways to practice in the States.
During PST we had long Spanish classes where we learned the language in a communicative manner and we also studied words and phrases that are used in Costa Rica. The training gave me a great understanding of general Costa Rican Spanish, but it did not prepare me for the various dialects that I encountered.
I live in a rural area on the border of the San Jose province. The way they speak is not the same way that they speak in Escazu and the capital. It was incredibly difficult at first because I had become so accustomed to the Spanish in Escazu, but what helped me was that I learned through immersion. I learned by listening to my students speak Spanish in class, speaking with my host family and teachers, and watching TV with my host family. Learning Spanish at site is not the same way that we learned in classes in training or in university, but this immersion has helped me to reach advanced-mid in Spanish.
Final Thoughts
13. Any last comments or observations you’d like to pass on to future Costa Rica volunteers?
Peace Corps is the experience of a lifetime. I am an experienced traveler, as this is the fourth country that I have lived in/traveled to, but I have never had an experience like this. I have never had the opportunity to live in a rural area in a foreign country before. I had always lived in cities. My integration had never been so deep. You become part of the community and you participate in a myriad of cultural activities. The Peace Corps is difficult. There is no doubt about that, but it is also a life-changing experience.
What are you waiting for? Opportunities like this don’t come often. If you have a passion for service and an adventurous spirit like Tracey’s, apply to the Peace Corps today. Expand your horizons, push your limits, and create positive impact as a volunteer. You never know how serving as a Peace Corps volunteer could change your life.
The content of this post does not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S. Government, the Peace Corps, or Costa Rica Government.
