Sometimes the best way to learn a language is not with homework and a bell schedule. With this philosophy in mind, 27 Spanish students will board a flight this June that will take them to Guatemala for two weeks.

This is the second time Spanish teacher Mary Pat Clasen will take a group of students to Guatemala. The first time was in summer 2006. Clasen, and Spanish teacher Shelli Albertson, will be taking students from each grade level and each level of Spanish.

Upon its arrival in Guatemala, the group will split, with half the students spending their first week in Antigua, and the other half proceeding to the Hogar Guadalupe orphanage. At the end of the first week, the groups will switch places.

Molly Hayes, a freshman Spanish II student, heard about the trip at freshman orientation and decided on the spot that she wanted to go, if possible.

“I was really excited,” said Hayes. “The orphanage sounded like a lot of fun, and I love little kids.”

The more experienced Spanish students will begin their stay at the orphanage, while the less experienced will start out in Antigua, attending a language school for four hours of instruction each morning from an individual tutor. The school, Centro Linguistico Maya, is the same one to which Clasen took her students two years ago.

“People wound up feeling they had a nice relationship with their tutors,” said Clasen. She said students went to their tutors for answers to questions that came up in their daily lives, such as how to communicate a problem to a host family, or vocabulary for the marketplace.

Though learning Spanish is one purpose of the trip, Clasen said, “that’s a goal that kind of sits in the background.” She said the most important parts of the experience were “the experimental component… how willing you are to take risks, how willing you are to not judge…. To understand a little bit more about the people there.”

In addition to Spanish lessons, the language school tuition includes three day-trips. The options include a hike, a visit to a coffee or macadamia nut farm, and a visit to a smaller village, among others. Students will also have one afternoon of dance lessons, at a different school.

“I think the dancing lessons will be really fun,” said freshman Nora Waters when asked what she was looking forward to most about the trip. Hayes also mentioned the dancing as a highlight.

Students will also have chances to explore Antigua, which Clasen described as a “beautiful, colonial town.” during unstructured time.

One day at the end of the week will be spent hiking up an active volcano, which Clasen said was particularly interesting two years ago.

Two years ago, Clasen only took her students to the orphanage for one weekend. The overwhelmingly positive response from her students prompted her to lengthen the stay this year.

The approximately 80 children at the orphanage range in age from infancy to 15 years old. The Shorewood students will spend time with all the age groups, playing, learning about their lives, and teaching them some English. Clasen has encouraged them to think of simple games and activities to do with the younger children.

“I don’t want to say this trip is service-oriented, because the goal of going to the orphanage is to hang out with the kids,” said Clasen.

Senior Geneva Lerner traveled to Guatemala in 2006, and will be accompanying the group to the orphanage this year as a “student leader,” said Clasen. Last year, Lerner went to the orphanage with Becky Wayman and Norah Purdy, SHS alumni from the class of 2007, to stay for two weeks.

“Last year I asked Profe Clasen if she knew of any trips that I could go on, that would take me abroad,” explained Lerner. “We looked at some and they were all too expensive, but she said that if I wanted to, I could go alone to the orphanage that we went to the previous year and possibly start a sister school program with the orphanage.”

While there, Lerner, Wayman and Purdy talked to the children at the orphanage about what they would like to do in an exchange. The ideas of setting up a pen pal system, and bringing the Guatemalan children to Shorewood for an exchange, were especially popular.

Lerner, who is “in love with Spanish” and hopes to continue studying it, did not have to think long about whether to return to Guatemala this summer.

“It was so much fun and such a good experience last time that I really couldn’t think of not going back,” she said.

SHS has another tie to the orphanage: last year, it was Student Council’s charity of the year. Donations from the Shorewood community are paying for a year of high school for 11 of the children at the orphanage. This year’s travelers will likely meet those students.

Overall, the trip to Guatemala is not focused on any one thing, which Clasen sees as one of it strengths. “It’s got some nice diversity, and potential for kids that are willing to take the risk,” said Clasen. “It’s got a lot of facets that are available, that people grab onto in different ways.”