Students exchange culture with students in Puerto Rico
BY JILL STEINKE

Stevens Point Journal staff

Friday, December 17, 2004

"Soy de Rosholt. En Rosholt hay muchas vacas."

Translation: "I am from Rosholt. In Rosholt there are many cows."

Students from Puerto Rico learned a few phrases from their new friends in central Wisconsin. Spanish students from Rosholt High School and science students from Puerto Rico exchanged information about their cultures and hometowns during a virtual conference Thursday at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point. With the help of the Internet and distance learning technology, the students could remain in their own country while seeing and speaking with each other.

"It's so great for them," Rosholt Spanish teacher Cari Frederickson said. "They'll be talking about this forever."

On a television in front of each classroom, students could look across thousands of miles to speak to their peers. For the first five minutes, the rooms were silent as the students looked at each other and noted the differences and similarities. The classroom in Puerto Rico was similar to the one at UWSP with tiered seating and a podium in the front. The only indication that this classroom was in a different part of the world was seeing the faces and clothing of the Puerto Rican students.

The attire of both classes was the main attention-getter and ice breaker for the students. There was definitely a difference in temperatures as seen by Puerto Rican students wearing short-sleeves or skirts compared to the down-filled vests and sweatshirts worn by Rosholt students. Also, the students in Puerto Rico must wear uniforms, so they noticed right away the casual attire worn to school here.

"The coolest thing is when you imagine kids from a different country you think they're so different," Madyson Kuklinski, 16, said, "but really they aren't different at all. It's just a language that sets us apart."

Even that wasn't the case for some of the students in Puerto Rico that are actually from the states and had relocated to the island.

Students exchanged information for an hour about the land here and there, landmarks or attractions such as cheeseheads in Wisconsin and beautiful beaches in Puerto Rico. Conversations were in a mixture of Spanish and English as each student worked on practicing another language.

"I thought it was really cool that we'd have an opportunity to speak with people who speak Spanish," Kuklinski said. Unafraid of her dialect and excited to converse with the other students, Kuklinski asked several questions and talked a lot about her own culture.

Kati Kluck, 17, was excited to finally see the class on the television. She and her classmates have been learning a lot about Puerto Rico all semester from Frederickson, who was able to visit the Puerto Rican class during the summer. Frederickson was able to bring that experience into the classroom and was reunited through the conference with friends she had met during her trip.

"For them to be able to connect and meet the students, it was a wonderful interaction just to make it all real," she said. "It was a good opportunity to promote them using the language."

Susan Ermer with the university's Environmental Education Program sponsored a trip for 11 Wisconsin teachers to travel to Puerto Rico, where they exchanged ideas with teachers in Puerto Rico and visited several unique sites on the island. Ermer's work on the program will be used as a model for additional educational experiences for teachers in the coming years.

Thursday's conference was a continuation of that experience and provided a rare chance for Rosholt students to practice speaking Spanish outside of the classroom.

Kuklinski feels her ability to speak Spanish well is important and she wishes her school offered more opportunities to improve it.

"When someone speaks Spanish in a hospital," she said, for example, "and no one knows Spanish, it's sad."