Why Learn English?

This week we begin teaching our own after-school English classes for high school, primary school, and adult students. These are all, of course, optional classes in addition to the required high school English classes.

Unlike second language requirements in US high schools, in Nicaragua English is a required class for all 7^th through 11^th grade students. At the US high school that I went to in Indiana, depending on the diploma you sought, you could get away with taking only two years, or at most three years, of Spanish or French classes. In contrast, Nicaraguans cannot graduate from high school without taking five years of English classes.

It's true that knowledge of English is a pretty crucial skill on a world-wide level, but even as an English teacher myself, I've sometimes wondered why kids in such a remote part of Nicaragua, whose lives are about corralling cattle and harvesting beans, need to know English? English is, after all, only the third most spoken language in the world (after Mandarin and Spanish). And in a town where almost no one speaks passable English, what in the world will these kids do with five years of English lessons under their belts?

One answer, of course, is go to the US, find a job that pays less-than-minimum wages for undocumented immigrants who speak broken English, and spend their lives sending money back to their children in Nicaragua. But the Nicaraguan government can't be training its children in English just so they can leave Nicaragua, can it?

No, especially with the tourist industry growing so rapidly in Nicaragua, there must be a Nicaraguan work sector that requires English. In an effort to incite our students to take learning English seriously (and to figure out why in the world we were teaching them English in the first place), we did some investigating in the city of Esteli, an hour away from San Nicolas.

We went around to various businesses in Esteli that we thought might hire English speakers and talked to the workers who were actually using the English they learned in high school for their jobs. We asked about their wages and their responsibilities and how they used their English, and then we reported back to our students. To give you an idea of how these workers' wages compare to other Nicaraguan wages, the farmers at the agricultural association where we volunteer earn around $110 a month. Teachers at the local public high school earn around $200 a month.

In Esteli we visited Hostal Sonati, a hostel that pays an English-speaking tour guide to show tourists around and do environmental education. We also visited Intur, the government-run tourist agency, where English speakers help put together tourist brochures and literature in English. Both of these tour guides offer a starting salary of around $155 a month.

At Hotel Los Arcos, a nice hotel in Esteli, the receptionist told us that they always have one English speaker to greet guests at the front desk. The receptionist told us that she studied tourism at university and as part of that degree had to take several English classes. A hotel receptionist who speaks English at Los Arcos earns between $190 and $310 a month.

Esteli is known for its tobacco, and we figured that with all the exporting that goes on, the many cigar factories in town must hire English speakers too. At the factory Joya de Nicaragua, we met a young man who spoke almost perfect English. He told us that he studied English intensively for about 2.5 years. At Joya, he deals with international sales and also gives tours to English-speaking visitors. As he was giving us our tour, he threw out English cigar jargon like it was nothing, taking puffs on the huge cigar dangling from his fingers as we went. In such a profitable business, an English speaker like this guy can earn $700 a month.

The man at Joya de Nicaragua also told us that people who speak English and work for a big company have a much better chance of excelling and working their way up the company ladder than people who don't speak English. He said that now is an ideal time to study English, because even though everyone studies English in high school, very few people actually speak it well, so the market is wide open. Right now, it's very easy to find a job for someone who speaks English, and the English job market is only growing. English speakers are needed for all kinds of jobs in the growing tourism industry, and call centers that hire English speakers to troubleshoot over the phone for Americans have recently been introduced in Nicaragua. And now with the Nicaraguan Canal project just on the horizon, for better or worse, Nicaraguans who speak English are becoming invaluable.

All of these jobs, of course, would require our own English students to leave the small town of San Nicolas to find work in a bigger city. And while in some ways it makes me sad to think about some of the brightest San Nicolaseños leaving their beautiful home town to go elsewhere, I think English knowledge can also be a hope for a better life for these students. And this, I hope, is where the value of our English classes lies.  

Back to School

San Nicolas streets in the morning are all of a sudden devoid of bike-riding, marble-playing, errand-running kids; last week, with the start of the 2015 school year, all of these kids were suddenly raptured up to school.

Then again, maybe it didn't really happen all that suddenly. About half of the kids we talked to before school started last Monday proudly reported that they weren't going to go to the first day of school. On the first day of school, they told us, the suckers that do show up just have to clean the entire school. Instead, these conscientious objectors proudly maintained the same positions they had held all summer, in front of their TVs, bored out of their minds.

There are, however, a few benefits to starting school again. For one thing, a new school year means new stuff. When we went to visit our friend Maria the other day, the first thing her eight-year-old daughter, Helen, wanted to do was show us each and every one of her new notebooks, the corners sharp and the pages completely blank. Lots of our students showed up at school last week wearing new uniforms: bright white-collared shirts and ironed navy-blue pants. And then there was the delivery of new textbooks and brooms and soccer balls from the Ministry of Education. So on the whole, kids seem to be excited.

We are certainly glad to see all of our old students again and are excited to get to know the new students in our seventh-grade class. We've put out a sign-up for the after-school English class that we'll hold this year on Mondays and Wednesdays, and almost 30 students have signed up for it already. Right after we put up the sign-up sheet, one girl was signing her name and looking up, asked me, “What is this for?” So we certainly don't expect all 30 of those students to follow through with our class, but at least there is some enthusiasm for it.

This year we're also planning to continue the English class for primary students that we offered last year. And since lots of adults in the community have expressed interest in learning English too, we're going to try doing a class for adults one day a week. At the high school, we'll also continue supporting the Nicaraguan English teacher by helping her during classes.

We have a few non-English-related goals for the school year too. For one thing, we're hoping to develop a library space in the director's office. On several occasions, people have stolen textbooks or money from the school, so with some money we've raised through our Balls and Books fundraiser, we're working on building a wooden bookcase with a lock on it, in which teachers can store textbooks safely. We're also using Balls and Books money to buy some paint to repaint the lines on the basketball court at the school so that P.E. classes can go a little more smoothly. And I'm hoping to host at least one more book club with some of the high school students and have them help me organize a reading program at the elementary school too.

Since Davie and I are leaving in September, we won't be here for the entire 2015 school year. So we hope we can take advantage of the next few months to accomplish some of these goals, teach a little English, and spend as much time with our students as we can.

Ecotourism in Northern Nicaragua

One of the things I have grown to love about Nicaragua is its environmental diversity. Here you find white-sand beaches and steaming volcanoes and enormous lakes, pine forests and cloud forests and thick jungle and mountains, all packed into a tiny country the size of New York state. Tourists are just starting to discover the amazing diversity of this tiny Central American country, and for better or worse, the tourism industry is beginning to seep into the remotest corners of Nicaragua.

We've been doing some touring ourselves for the past week or so, with both sets of our parents and my brother Jon. Most San Nicolaseños don't have the money to see even half of the places we've seen in their own beautiful country. But they do take advantage of the locally-designated tourist sites that they can easily reach on their own two feet. The nearby community of La Garnacha is not much different from any other community around San Nicolas, but because it has worked up an appeal to tourists from outside, San Nicolaseños take pride in it and visit it themselves, taking selfies at the lookout and buying bags of chips at the pulperia in town.

San Nicolas, on the other hand, is in no tourist guide book; it's not a stop on the tourist trail. The only other gringos we ever see in town are Peace Corps gringos. But if you want to visit a remote, mountainous, agricultural area like San Nicolas, there are lots of small ecotourism ventures, both in our area south of Esteli (the Tisey Nature Reserve), and in the Miraflor protected area north of Esteli too. We've spent a lot of time in Tisey and visited Miraflor last week with our parents. Here is why you should visit too.

Tisey Estanzuela Nature Reserve

Before I came here, I never would have believed that there could be pines in such a tropical climate, but in Tisey, they're everywhere. From the overlook at La Garnacha, on a clear day you can look out on the pine-covered mountains in Tisey, all the way to Volcan Momotombo in Lake Managua. There are plenty of hikes to do in this area; take the trail past the La Garnacha overlook to hike to the top of the Cerro Apaguajil, or walk through cow pastures to reach the rock sculptor, Alberto Gutierrez, who carves images on the side of a cliff.

There are a scattering of families and groups who have begun tourism projects in Tisey. We're of course most familiar with La Garnacha, an organic farm, retreat center, and small community in the mountains close to San Nicolas. One family in La Garnacha owns a farm called El Carrizo; they invite tourists to volunteer on their organic farm in exchange for partial room and board. Closer to Esteli is the Ecoposada, a restaurant with lodging that also has a hike up to a beautiful lookout over all of Tisey. And not far outside of Esteli is the Salto Estanzuela, a crashing waterfall above a little pool of water where you can swim.

Miraflor Protected Area

In Miraflor, rolling green hills and fields of potatoes are interspersed with cloud forest, jungle, and enormous trees. Farmers make their living among patches of thick rain forest, home to howler monkeys and trogon birds. There are various communities offering home stays to tourists throughout Miraflor, but we have only visited the highest-elevation level, close to Cebollal. We stayed at Finca Neblina del Bosque in a bamboo cabin overlooking flowers and potato fields. We went on a bird-watching hike one morning and within only a couple hours, had seen 40 different species. At this higher part of Miraflor, you can hike to a giant matapalo tree through the Finca La Soñada or walk through farmland to the waterfall Posa Azul, where you can cool off in the really-cold pool below the falls.

In both Tisey and Miraflor, you'll get a taste of real rural Nicaraguan life. Here, you can learn how to make tortillas or milk cows or just take in the tranquility of these undeveloped natural areas. In the rural hills of Nicaragua, the prime industry since forever has been agriculture, so the people who live here don't have much money. Now small-scale tourism is, for the first time, bringing these families just enough money to improve their standards of living as well as granting them a sense of pride in the beautiful land that is their home.