This summer, Piedmont High School students will have the opportunity to spend two weeks in Nicaragua working on their language skills and doing community service. The trip is from June 13 through 25 and will be chaperoned by Christelle Hutin-Lee and Joanne Guillén-Donahoe, both Spanish teachers.

This is the second summer trip the language department has done though the Global Works program, a program that offers international community service opportunities to high school students in America. 

“[The trip] increases the level of comfort with the language tremendously because the students are surrounded by language all the time,” Hutin-Lee said.

All students are invited to participate in the trip, not just those who are taking Spanish. Because students who are learning languages other than Spanish are invited, it creates another way for the Spanish students to work on their skills, by translating for their classmates they work extra hard and gain more time speaking and communicating with native speakers.

“We hope that [the students] gain the ability to connect with people from different cultures and different socioeconomic portions of the population,”  Hutin-Lee said.

The first week of the trip will be spent in Managua, the capital city of Nicaragua. Students will tour the city and assist medical professionals with their work. From there students are separated into groups of two or three to be sent off to a homestay program in the mountains for three days. The last two days in Nicaragua are spent at the beaches swimming and surfing.

“We picked the Nicaragua trip because it has a science component in the community service part of the trip that we thought would be really interesting to a lot of students here,” Hutin-Lee said.

During the community service part of the trip, students will be shadowing and assisting medical professionals and workers for the Ministry of Health. While participating students will be interacting with the people of Managua, giving them the opportunity to work on both their Spanish and medical skills.

“Just being in a setting where English is most likely not spoken pushes them to speak Spanish’” Guillén-Donahoe said.

The three day homestay program is full immersion into the Spanish language. The families students will be staying with speak little to no English making students communicate fully through Spanish therefore developing their Spanish language skills.

“I’m looking forward to meeting the people there, because part of the trip is just interacting with the community and seeing the different cultures and how it is different from where I am now,”  sophomore Eva Hunter said..

Two years ago Hutin-Lee and Guillén-Donahoe went to Panama with 12 freshman students. Much like the upcoming trip these students participated in homestays, community service and language integration. Instead of working with doctors, these students spent time with the native people building schools. One of the students who went on this trip was junior Amelia Eldridge.

“When you didn’t have a teacher there talking and most of the families didn’t speak any English you really learned how to communicate with them,” Eldridge said.