By Cheryl Cranick, Honors Program
Sarah Stockmann, B.A. ’10 (EDUC-Honors), M.Ed. ’11 (EDUC) came to UConn for the reputation of Neag’s Integrated Bachelor’s/Master’s Teacher Education Program. And though she intends to eventually teach in an urban Connecticut school system, she chose first to begin her journey a little farther from home, in a small Nicaraguan community, as the town’s first environmental education Peace Corps volunteer.
This Guilford native Honors Scholar is not new to travel, service, or even the Peace Corps. In the spring semester of 2008, she traveled to Cape Town, South Africa, with the Honors study abroad program, where she interned with a non-profit school. She has also been to Oaxaca, Mexico, several times with Simply Smiles, an organization dedicated to helping underprivileged children. “I have worked building houses for families living in the city garbage dump and done food distributions in a remote jungle village,” said Stockmann.
Her interest in the Peace Corps began during her Reading and Writing Methods class, when Neag professor Dr. Don Leu described his own service experience, she said. She sought him out after class for additional details, and soon after, decided to apply to the Peace Corps as well. The process took roughly a year, involving paperwork, health exams, a background check, and an interview in New York City. But finally, the day before her graduation in May 2011, she received her official assignment, said Stockmann. She was headed to Honduras.
The Republic of Honduras, a separate nation bordering its fellow Central American country of Nicaragua, was actually Stockmann’s first placement. “I completed three months of training and three months of work in my site before the Peace Corps decided that the country was too unsafe to allow volunteers to stay. So in January 2012, they pulled all 150 volunteers out of the country,” she said.
Stockmann spent the next few months substitute teaching and working at a summer camp in Connecticut before receiving her new assignment: La Concordia, in the Jinotega department of Nicaragua. The typical eleven weeks of training provided by the Peace Corps were modified slightly for Stockmann since she had already received much of the instruction in Honduras. Furthermore, having reached an advanced level of language, Stockmann instead “worked with other advanced-level trainees on projects in our community and did a lot of teaching in the school in order to practice for what I’d be doing once I got to my site,” she said.
She also received environmental education training, which is the main focus of her assignment. “I had a choice between environmental education and teaching English. Most of the TEFL programs involve working with high schools, and because I am an elementary education major, I chose to work in a project that works with younger students,” she said.
‘Very qualified’
Once in La Concordia, Stockmann assimilated to her classrooms. “My project is to co-plan and co-teach with local teachers,” she said. “That way they learn new methods and can keep using them once my two years of service end.”
Her students are spread across two schools of varying size. A larger one follows a traditional grade breakdown similar to the States, while the other combines years (second, fifth, and sixth) into one classroom. Elementary education covers all subjects, but Stockmann’s focus is science. She also teaches OTV (technical and vocational orientation), “which includes gardens, compost, [and] tree nurseries,” she said. “We start out in the classroom and then work outside. Agriculture is a major industry in Nicaragua, that’s why gardening is a prominent part of the curriculum.” When the students study outside, it is often in the early morning or late afternoon because of the heat.
With degrees in elementary education and curriculum and instruction, a concentration in science, and a minor in human rights, Stockmann has been pleasantly surprised to see her influence in the Nicaraguan classrooms has been positively received by her fellow teachers. “I thought that it would take a long time to build what Nicaraguans call ‘confianza’ or trust with the people that I work with. They have been really welcoming and have actually taken some of my advice and methods that I use while I teach, and started using them in their other classes while I’m not there.”
Stockmann—who integrated her interest in human rights into her Honors thesis by surveying teachers about their knowledge of human rights education and how the subject is taught in classrooms—feels her UConn training is to thank for the respect she has earned in her new community. “My education in Neag has most definitely made me a better volunteer here in Nicaragua,” she said. “I feel very qualified to be working where I am, as I have received more formal training in education than most of the teachers that I work with.”
Nicaragua, “nicknamed ‘the land of lakes and volcanoes,’” is still recovering from war and revolution only a few decades ago. Though Stockmann noted the most obvious signs of war that linger are “mostly in the stories. The war is recent, so people will often mention what life was like during that time,” she said. But unlike Honduras, Stockmann remarked the region is “very safe.”
“My site is small, built on a hill, and centered around the big, white Catholic church and park, which has swings, slides, and a paved basketball/soccer court with bleachers,” she said. “The roads are paved with cobblestones, and the town is about five blocks by five blocks… The houses are mostly made of bricks or cement, and are one-story and small. There are usually dogs in the streets, but all are owned by families, not a lot of strays. People ride through on horses and there are a lot of motorcycles, very few cars. It gets hot during the day (90s), but cools down at night (60s). The rainy season’s about to start, and during the rainy season, it mostly rains in the evenings.”
Peace Corps volunteers must live with a host family, but Stockmann enjoys the luxury of “a small government-built house that is next to my host family’s house. The house has a cement floor and walls, a metal door, and bars on the windows. It’s small, but it’s fine for me,” she said. “We have electricity and (most of the time) running water.” Her host family has another luxury: wireless Internet.
While the food tends to be lacking in variety, it is hearty and homemade. The French press she packed from home, which she had been missing in Honduras, has turned out to be unnecessary in a country whose leading export is coffee. Being the only “gringa,” slang for a white female, has its drawbacks: “Everyone knows where I am and what I’m doing all the time. I have to be careful to not give anyone any reasons to gossip about me,” she said. But it also means “everyone knows me and watches out for me.”
And though she misses her family, friends, “and little things like bagels, wine, and lounging on a couch,” said Stockmann, she would recommend the Peace Corps to anyone. “They say that the Peace Corps is ‘the toughest job you’ll ever love.’ Every day your limits are tested and you are forced to grow. It is an experience unlike anything else.”
To follow Sarah’s Peace Corps experience, check out her blog!
Return to the Summer 2013 issue of the Honors Alumni eNewsletter