A native daughter and 2007 graduate of Gloucester High School recently returned from an eight-week teaching adventure on the islands that once inspired naturalist Charles Darwin, coming home a more confident and knowledgeable person.
"I learned that just in order to do something really meaningful for myself, I had to walk into the unknown," Alex Gross said.
Gross, who skipped a grade and graduated at a younger age than most of her classmates, has been accepted at the University of Massachusetts Amherst for the spring semester, and in January she will join approximately 20 of her former high school classmates already there. She plans to major in biology and minor in Spanish.
The unknown
"I found the volunteer organization 'i-to-i' online over the summer," Gross said. "Originally, I had been interested in working with a different organization, but you had to be at least 18 years old."
The United Kingdom-based "i-to-i" has a number of volunteer programs set up in Asia, Africa and South America, including in the remote Galapagos Islands, located 600 miles off the Ecuadorian coast near the equator.
This group of 14 volcanic islands, nicknamed "The Enchanted Islands," have long been a dream trip for nature lovers. The Galapagos Islands fall under the jurisdiction of Ecuador's National Park Service.
Darwin sailed there aboard the HMS Beagle in 1835 and island-hopped to observe and record each island's uniqueness - especially animal life that includes 26 endemic birds and reptiles, including the marine iguana, Galapagos albatross and the woodpecker finch. No amphibians live on the Galapagos Islands.
Santa Cruz is the most developed island, as well as the most heavily populated - approximately 20,000 residents. Tourism powers the economy there.
"The islands are where the people from the mainland dream to work. Living here is a lot more expensive than the mainland," Gross said.
Gross' particular program involved working with kindergartners since she enjoys teaching "little kids."
"Plus the Galapagos Islands have always interested me," she said. "I also picked the place with the safest environment."
Her parents, Tony, a lobsterman and a former Gloucester School Committee member, and Abbie, the editor of C.I.O. Magazine, "were really supportive from the start. Despite the unknown factor, I was definitely excited to go," Gross said.
Her "unknown factor" largely orbited around first jetting alone, thousands of miles from Boston to Quito, Ecuador, and finally to the Galapagos Islands, then living within a Spanish-speaking culture and performing a job in a public school.
Her job
Gross' program got underway Oct. 8 and was to last a month. "I enjoyed the program so much that I extended it a month," she said.
Santa Cruz then became her island of work and residence. She lived in a host home arranged by "i-to-i" and primarily worked at the nearby Galo Plaza, one of Santa Cruz's public schools. She also had the option there to easily reach home via cell phone or the Internet.
"I would call in once in a while," Gross said.
"I taught English about 45 minutes a day to 34 kindergartners, and the rest of the day (Monday through Friday, from 8 a.m. to noon) helped the teacher run the class," Gross said. "My students, more girls than boys, were entirely Ecuadorian. Most well-to-do families on the islands send their children to private schools, since public schools are not very well funded. I picked up some jobs teaching adults as well, after hours."
Many of Gross' students later came up to her outside of the school and spoke broken English with her.
But Gross' initial introduction to the program started off roughly after she was accidentally assigned to the wrong kindergarten class in the lowest-funded school on the island.
"The English teacher there was a college student at night and a teacher during the day. The kids were out of control in his class," she said. "I've never seen the likes of it before."
Adapted quickly
"I felt comfortable at the islands in just two days. I adapted very quickly because the islands were such an inviting place," Gross said.
Her biggest adjustment was having to take cold-water showers at her host home. "Most of the older homes just have cold water," she said.
Neither food nor language posed any problem for Gross.
"The food was really good. It was very South American with lots of starches and base proteins. Good fruit and fruit juices were available all the time," she said.
"I really felt comfortable speaking Spanish at the islands. Neither my host nor any of the teachers at school spoke English. Socially, I also spoke mostly Spanish," said Gross, who took four years of Spanish at Gloucester High under teacher Silvia Sol-Gomez.
"She did a really good job teaching me the language," Gross said.
But unusual weather proved to be vexing for her at times.
"Probably due to global climatic changes, the Galapagos Islands were experiencing their coldest year in 30 years," she said. Cloudy, damp and 65-degree temperatures often replaced October and November's traditional sunny, extremely dry and 85- to 95-degree temperatures this year.
During her free time and especially on good weather days, Gross often took in and photographed some of the islands' wildlife, especially on and around Santa Cruz and Isabella islands.
"I did a lot of snorkeling," she said.
Gross had to be careful of the surf in places and also of the bull sea lions along the shoreline, who instinctively drive away trespassers on their territories during mating season.
"I loved the marine iguanas just because they were everywhere," Gross added.
But throughout these side treks, Gross witnessed "the negative affects of people being careless environmentally.
"There was trash along the coast, and a lot of it came from tourists," she said.
This news will shock those who have visited the islands, especially during the 1970s, and who remember the rule of thumb they were required to follow while touring any of the islands: "Leave behind only footprints in the sand and take back only memories and exposed film."
After eight weeks, "it was really difficult to leave, especially my students and the many friends that I had made. I loved the opportunity to work with students in a public school," Gross said. "I definitely feel that I learned a lot about the value of teaching and what I can do to make an impact. This was a great experience. I hope to return."
