Students from East Ridge Middle School visited Costa Rica with teacher Jennifer Roth.
For the fifth year in a row, East Ridge science teacher Jennifer Roth took eighth graders on a weeklong trip to Costa Rica.
The group, including Ms. Roth, her husband, two teenage daughters, two tour guides, and 29 students, experienced seven days filled with adventure, culture and learning.
Students visited a girls orphanage, Hogar Siempre, slept in a cave, rappelled off a waterfall, white-water rafted, zip-lined, and spent two nights in a local family’s home.
“This was a trip of a lifetime for most of these students. I would not continue doing this if I did not feel that the kids got so much out of this experience,” said Ms. Roth. “Traveling to Costa Rica as a group has created such special friendships and a special bond with both with the people of Costa Rica and with their peers.”
With the help of Costa Rican Resource, a company with which Ms. Roth has worked since the first trip, in 2010, the group aims to be as environmentally friendly as possible throughout the entire week of travel. At the same time, the students learn the importance of living in harmony with nature in addition to techniques they can use in their own home to lessen their ecological footprint.
Many students were nervous about the language barrier when they first arrived, especially since most of them had been in Spanish for only two to three years and felt they knew only basic vocabulary. However, Ms. Roth said, by the end of the first day, students were amazed at how much they could understand and how easy it was to communicate, whether it was just by bits and pieces of Spanish or by hand gestures.
“This trip is supposed to take children out of their comfort zone while also educating them about the different culture that exists in Costa Rica,” said Mr. Roth, “It is certainly a different world outside of Ridgefield, and I hope that students became more globally aware after traveling to what is known as the happiest country in the world.”