Lowell Sun, January 24, 2009
By Bridge Scrimenti
The sound of Spanish vocabulary and laughter echo around Kerri Piette’s kitchen table.
Each week Piette takes Spanish lessons from Leonor Chivichón. However, Piette lives in Carlisle and Chivichón in Guatemala.
The two women connect through Speak Shop, a business that offers Spanish lessons from native speakers via the Web.
“We laugh a lot and compare notes about culture and current events,” said Piette, who uses a Web cam to talk face to face with Chivichón.
Next week, Piette will put her Spanish-speaking skills to the test, when she returns to Honduras to volunteer to Montaña de Luz, an orphanage. The first person she hopes to impress is Celestina, an orphan, whom Piette considers a daughter. “She (Celestina) teases me relentlessly,” Piette said. “I promised if she studied her English in school, I would practice my Spanish so I could talk to her without using a dictionary.
While Piette’s Spanish has improved with Chivichón, she is also pleased to support fair-trade practices.
Speak Shop, a Portland, Ore., based business employs tutors from Guatemala and Nicaragua, allowing them to keep all of their hourly wages, which range from $7 to $10 an hour. The company charges customers a subscription fee, ranging from $9.99 to $39.99 a month.
Students in Burlington High School’s alternative program also use Speak Shop to learn Spanish. In this program, students take classes at night and enjoy the flexibility of having a Web tutor, said Burlington Superintendent of schools Eric Conte.
The School Department is also exploring the idea of adding Speak Shop as a supplement to the classroom.
“It’s not just a way of providing Spanish, but a way to add depth to a program,” Conte said.
Speak Shop tutors, who also teach at Spanish language immersion schools, say the business allows them a better quality of life and more time to spend with family.
“I think it’s (Speak Shop) not only going to change their (the tutors’) lives, but change the lives of their children and that to me is extremely rewarding,” said Clay Cooper, owner of Speak Shop.
Cooper began the business in 1998, after completing a Spanish-immersion program in Guatemala. He was struck by the country’s impoverished conditions, and wanted to help tutors earn extra income in the off season, when tourists weren’t seeking lessons.
Piette said her enhanced Spanish language skills are critical to connect with children at the orphanage, many of whom are infected with HIV and AIDS. “It (the orphanage) was going to be a hospice for children to die, but what happened was they started receiving antiretroviral drugs and living – and now it’s their home,” Piette said.
For the past three years, Piette and her son Jarrett, 18, have visited the orphanage. “They’re always in our minds,” Piette said. “There’s pictures of them on the mantel – we miss them.”
