LIMON PROVINCE, Costa Rica — Armed with degrees in Spanish and Global Studies, Pittsboro’s Shannon Grand was looking for a little something different upon her 2018 graduation from UNC-Chapel Hill.
It wasn’t long before she found herself in Costa Rica.
Grand planned to eventually teach high school Spanish, and that created a desire to live in a Spanish-speaking country for a significant amount of time before beginning her teaching career. The Peace Corps, she said, offered that opportunity.
“To someone who is considering the Peace Corps, I would say that they should focus on learning the language really well and getting to know the people in the place where they live,” Grand said. “Two years is a long time to be in another country but building relationships with the people around you will make a big difference in your experience.”
In addition to her luggage and a healthy dose of enthusiasm, she took something else with her on the flight to Costa Rica: her love of dance.
Grand started taking ballet when she was 4 years old and continued to dance until she graduated high school. Her mother was a dance teacher.
“Though she was never officially my dance teacher, she taught me a lot about being a dancer — and a person — when I was growing up,” Grand said.
While in Limon Province in the Latin American nation, Grand serves as a volunteer with the Peace Corps’ “Teaching English as a Foreign Language” program. She co-plans and co-teaches with Costa Rican English teachers in an elementary school in the country’s public school system.
The program’s goal is building capacity in English and education for the teachers, as well as promoting student participation in English inside and outside the classroom. Grand also coordinated some English conversation groups and a summer English camp for the children.
Soon after arriving, Grand was connected with a local Civic Center for the Peace, which was just opening at the time. The center provides a “safe, healthy environment for young people in the area to participate in arts, recreation, sports, and leadership activities,” Grand said. Upon seeing that the center had a dance studio, she offered to teach a ballet class.
“The civic center was looking for instructors and we ended up coordinating several groups of dancers, as well as adding a group in August because of additional interest,” she said. “I ended up with five total dance groups at the civic center.”
Grand began teaching in her free time during the week after school and on Saturdays. To close out the school year, which ends in December, 60 dancers from the five classes performed “The Nutcracker” for an audience of 400 people to “show everything the students had learned.”
Many of the dancers, who ranged in age from 7 to 17, had never participated in formal dance before the classes. Since several of the students could not afford to go to dance studios in the area, some traveled more than an hour to the center. The parents of the children participated as well, making costumes, building sets and helping organize the dancers during the performance.
“The show itself was a collaboration between parents, students, civic center staff, and myself,” Grand said. “It could not have happened without the community’s participation and engagement in the project.”
For Grand, it was a stimulating event.
“For me, this experience can be summed up by the moment the show began,” she said. “All the dancers on the stage with the civic center coordinator for a picture, and in the audience the parents and families of the dancers, my host family and the friends I’ve made in town, the Peace Corps volunteers from the area and some Peace Corps staff, the staff and volunteers at the Civic Center, and my mom visiting from the States... It brought together everyone that has helped, coached, and supported me throughout the process and made the performance what it was.”
Grand still has another year of teaching in Costa Rica ahead of her. As she finishes up “summer” camp and begins another academic year, she is teaching dance camp three times a week.
“I’m looking forward to seeing what the new year will bring,” she said.
Reporter Casey Mann can be reached at CaseyMann@Chathamnr.com.