In 2022, a group of Spanish students were laying concrete by hand. They were in a small Costa Rican village and had no power tools. Erin McKinnon, a Spanish teacher at Goffstown High School recalled “You know, [there] weren’t high quality tools…[we did it] by hand” The Goffstown Spanish students had vacationed for five days in Costa Rica, surfing, ziplining, but widely their favorite part was staying with a host family and serving the Costa Rican village they stayed im.
Goffstown is going on a service adventure to Costa Rica in June of 2025. This trip is open to students who are enrolled in Spanish, either at Goffstown High school or in VLACS. Senora Demarco and McKinnon have both gone to Costa Rica before in 2022. Goffstown went white river rafting, zip lining, hiking, and also ventured to a waterfall. Though this trip is a fun tourist-like experience for the second half, the first half of the trip is five days with a local community with the objective to improve their community with service projects. The trip, specifically the service portion according to Lisa DeMarco “….Provides growth… it challenges them, obviously with their Spanish, but also kind of with their sense of community, [And] their sense of the world around them.”
According to the Spanish language department, 2022’s service adventure was a great success. At the community, Demarco’s team worked on the school’s greenhouse, they cleaned, replanted, and revitalized the fading greenhouse. All of the service projects ultimately were for the school and McKinnon’s team replaced concrete for the kids basketball court. After the projects were completed all of the Gofftown students were able to meet the local kids they had been working for. Demarco mentioned “It was just nice to see how excited they were and how thankful they were.” Demarco also continued to reflect on her and McKinnon’s stay with the communities Abuelita and how meaningful the connection was to her by saying. “I still keep in touch with her… she’s really sweet”
Last year, Goffstown attempted to go to Guatemala, but the enrollment was too little to warrant going. Luckily this trip to Costa Rica has enough students to go, but still needs more students to provide a more well-rounded trip. On the Guatemala trip, McKinnon thought the failure of enrollment could have been due to the lack of knowledge about Guatemala, and some parents’ concerns about student safety ( the U.S travel department classifies Guatemala as a “reconsider travel” though this is mostly centered around major cities.) She was disappointed by this as Guatemala has a special connection with their indigenous culture and she hopes to offer the opportunity again in the future.
At the end of the day it matters less about where Goffstown is going, and more why they are going and the cultural and lingual experience. McKinnon made this point clear when she said “it just gives people a different perspective…on what it means to be comfortable, happy, and what it means to be a community” a lot of students had anxiety about living with a host family, but both Demarco and McKinnon said that it was students favorite part. The reasons students should go is a hunger for learning, culture, and personal growth. As Demarco says “it’s a great opportunity for students to integrate into a culture that is different from what we experience here in the US. It allows them to integrate Spanish wise, [and] having that immersion is huge”
This experience is still looking for students who are interested, please contact Senora Demarco for more information. The current due date for the second round of interested students is the fifteenth of December.
