Every once in a while, Ken Winograd, associate professor of teacher education, has a flashback of Costa Rican urban streets: potholes, no sidewalks, crime, pollution, cars, buses, and trucks speeding frantically. In contrast to Costa Rican streets, when Ken walks on Corvallis sidewalks after his year of sabbatical in Costa Rica, he’s reminded of the relative ease of life in the United States for certain groups of people. “My biggest realization was of the increasing divide between the haves and the have-nots. It’s not only rampant in Costa Rica and Latin America, but globally,” he says.

During his sabbatical, Ken initially concentrated his research on literacy, but as the months went by he broadened his focus to include the Costa Rican educational system in general. “Our Costa Rican friends remember the country as a wonderful place to live until the 1980s when a huge shift in global economics caused the quality of life to degrade, education and health care systems to erode, and employment and infrastructure to collapse. The poverty rate is now 20% and another 20% are near-poverty”

Ken’s research yielded a whole range of experiences; he visited many public school classrooms, observing teaching practices; provided teacher training workshops in Spanish; and taught English in the barrios. “They have nothing…no textbooks, no school libraries, nothing on the walls. The teacher writes on the blackboard and students copy it so the blackboard becomes the text.”

His research, observations, teacher interviews, and hands-on experiences have been crafted into a book proposal with the working title, Education, Soccer, Oxcarts, and Inequality: Reflections on a Year in Costa Rica. “My sabbatical was such a valuable experience. It got me re-thinking about what I want to be as a citizen and as a teacher,” says Ken. “I am re-energized.”