By AMELIA HEAGERTY

Vashon High School counselor Shirley Ferris is making good on her promise to send students to a developing country. With a $2,000 Doors of Opportunity grant she was awarded in 2005, Ferris is taking four VHS students to Jamaica for a two-week trip in February, where they will teach, learn and play in a vastly different culture.

“When I received (the grant), I made a public commitment to open doors for students,” Ferris said, “where they could experience adventure and teamwork and cultural connections and maybe a little community service and lots of fun.”

Dubbed Project Jamaica, the trip will give students a chance to mix it up with their Jamaican counterparts, who, because of the education system there, are no longer enrolled in school. They’ll play soccer with the Jamaican youths, share meals and teach them both math and art, Ferris said.

“By the time they’re 13, if they haven’t done well in school, they’re done with school. They’re not offered a high school opportunity,” former Islander Tressa Azpiri said of the Jamaican teens. Azpiri now lives on a 10-acre farm in a rural community in Jamaica and will host the group from Vashon.

There were 34 applicants for the four spots on Project Jamaica, Ferris said. The application revealed that students would be jetting to Jamaica, but not the specifics of their experience.

“We really picked kids we thought would be open and flexible, would be willing to do a certain amount of reflection,” Ferris said. “We just wanted regular down-to-earth kids who would enjoy the experience, who aren’t afraid of challenge, don’t mind getting dirty.”

Those students are sophomores Joe Gilmour and Robert McGinnis and juniors Nikki Affolter and Jessica Bauer.

Ferris said traveling internationally can be life-changing. She pointed to her own experiences in Latin and South America and said she hoped the trip to Jamaica might affect the VHS students in a similarly pivotal way.

“We tried in our interviews to see how curious and grounded the kids are, see how ready they are for an experience that could maybe make a change for them,” she said.

The Islanders will be staying in a rural community called Breezy Hill, three miles from the ocean. While the Doors of Opportunity grant will cover most of the cost of transportation, the VHS students must raise a minimum of $400 for the rest and for expenses incurred during the trip. Doors of Opportunity is a grant sponsored by the Vashon PTSA given to an exemplary Island educator each year.

Ferris and VHS counselor Linda Mather will chaperone the trip, and the visitors will all stay in a guest house on the property of Azpiri, who began working on educational opportunities for children in Jamaica 15 years ago and moved there full-time July of last year.

Ferris and Azpiri have known each other for decades, ever since Azpiri was a student in Ferris’ freshman English class at VHS. Their friendship grew over the years that followed, and this will be Ferris’ second trip to Azpiri’s tropical spread.

“I think it’ll be a variety of just being there for two weeks and experiencing being a part of a rural community,” Ferris said of the trip, “a lot of playing with the children, doing math with the kids, math from the ground using pebbles and sticks and whatever’s handy.”

Azpiri agreed and said the students will teach math and art “through play.” They will also help out with organic farming on Azpiri’s land, where she grows a gamut of fruits and vegetables, from bok choy and bananas to pineapples and sweet-sop, a native Jamaican fruit.

The students and chaperones will also build tree-houses and playhouses for Jamaican children, visit local high schools and write in journals daily.

“Each student will be matched with a Jamaican youth and their family,” Ferris said. “They’ll be spending a lot of time with them. Three of the four families have neither power nor water.”

The students will go without many modern conveniences themselves, including electronic devices and perhaps a warm shower.

At the Azpiri residence, “if there is water and power simultaneously,” students can take a warm shower, Azpiri said. If not, they must “heat water over the wood fire or use a solar shower bag hung from a tree,” she said.

Since the students are in Jamaica, they’ll get to soak up a little of the Caribbean flavor as well. Because one U.S. dollar is worth 70 Jamaican dollars, river rafting costs just $2, and all-night fishing expeditions are $15. The group may take a glass-bottom boat tour, go snorkeling or camp out in the Blue Mountains.

The students said they were excited to be immersed in another culture so drastically different from the United States.

Gilmour said he has “a bunch of skills” he will use in Jamaica, but expressed trepidation about potential culture shock.

“A lot of the customs that Tressa was explaining were a little nerve-wracking, like if you don’t say thanks before sitting down and eating they’ll ask you to leave, that was like wow,” he said. “I hope to be able to understand the Jamaican culture and be able to relate to the people down there.”

Bauer, who commutes to Vashon from Southworth, said Project Jamaica “sounded like the perfect opportunity.”

“I just want to help out with the community and the kids,” she said. “The team that we have, I know them but not really well, so I’m looking forward to getting to know them.”

She said she was excited about trying the plethora of exotic fruits and vegetables that grow on Jamaican soil.

“(Azpiri) said we could go outside and pick our own fruit. I think that would be so much fun,” Bauer said.

So why did Azpiri decide to pull the plug on her well-reputed 23-year-old Island preschool Puddle Stompers and move to Jamaica? She said she was so frustrated with the Bush administration and its No Child Left Behind Act that she opted for an island outside U.S. waters, where she felt her skills as an educator could make a significant impact.

Azpiri now works with eight Jamaican youths at a time, teaching them basic reading and writing skills and advancing their math skills greatly, while they are also trained in apprenticeship programs like upholstery or carpentry.

“They could not read at all, so obviously they couldn’t write, but they could add and subtract,” she said. “Now they’re doing square roots, and they’re at a first- or second-grade reading level.”

The students have learned all that in just eight months of school a few days a week, she said.

Airfare jumped significantly just before Ferris bought tickets, so students are seeking donations or other ways to raise the $400 needed for their trip. According to Azpiri, the students are available for a variety of projects, including Christmas light stringing, car-washing and dump runs.

“It’s kind of cool that it’s another island; it’s an island relationship,” Ferris said. “I’m not anticipating any difficulties at all. They just need to come with a willing spirit and sturdy shoes.”