Culver’s Spanish teachers spend week in Panama learning about country’s history, culture, taking part in professional development

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Tom Coyne

Sep 12 2025

Culver Academies Spanish instructors Emily Kayser (l) and Betsie O'Neill pose with indigenous residents of Panama.

Culver Academies Spanish instructors Betsie O’Neill and Emily Kayser spent a week in Panama learning about the culture and history of the Central American country, its canal, its indigenous tribes and how it is a modern capital being overtaken by the surrounding rainforest.

“Being there and learning all that was a lifetime experience, and then the pictures and the videos I was able to get,” O’Neill said. “Now I can show these pictures and videos and tell these stories to my students.”

Every summer teachers from Culver’s World Language and Culture Department travel to countries around the world to take part in language seminars and learn about other cultures. O’Neill and Kayser attended a professional conference of the American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese in Panama.

“The conference was great because we got really impressive professional development in the Spanish language and grammar that will help us on the pedagogy side, and then we got this incredible cultural experience to teach our students about,” Kayser said.

It was the first trip to Panama for both, who are in their second year teaching at Culver, one of the top boarding schools in the United States. Kayser teaches Spanish I and II and O’Neill teaches Spanish II and III.

The capital, Panama City, is a modern city with skyscrapers and more than one million residents, but is surrounded by rain forest. The teachers said everybody they met in Panama talked about how people in Panama respect the environment because they are so aware the canal is a dammed river. If it stops raining, the canal will dry up.

“Everywhere you look you can see the jungle,” Kayser said. “You’d be in an Uber and they’d be telling you about the city and you’d be going on a small road, and they’d say, ‘If you look on the left you used to be able to see the ocean, but the jungle took it back.’ And you’re not allowed to touch any of it once the jungle takes it back.”

They also learned about how government protects the seven indigenous tribes of Panama.

“They are like a separate entity. They speak Spanish but they also speak their own language,” Kayser said.

O’Neill, who grew up in Peru, said she isn’t allowed to speak her native Quechua there.

In Panama, the indigenous tribes still dress in their traditional clothes, traditional medicine and traditional houses. Indigenous people at the conference showed how they made ink to make temporary tattoos and how they used the leaves of the palm tree to make crafts.

“I tried to make one and I don’t think I could ever do that,” O’Neill said.

One day a tribe took her up the river in a wooden canoe and Kayser got to see how they live.

“It was incredible,” Kayser said.

The teachers said they can teach their students about the importance of how all the people of Panama respect how others live.

Culver Academies Spanish instructor Emily Kayser took a canoe to see how an indigenous tribe lives. (Photo by Emily Kayser)

“There are so many things we can incorporate into our lessons,” O’Neill said. “It will help our students to be able to compare and appreciate other cultures.”

They also learned through an Imax movie narrated by Morgan Freeman about how with the backing of the United States, Panama declared its independence from Colombia in 1903. In one of the great engineering feats of modern history, the United States built the canal between 1904 and 1914, and operated it thereafter until 1977, when President Jimmy Carter signed a treaty agreeing to joint custody with Panama. Panama took full control in 1999.

They then went out and sat in the stands and watched ships going through the 51-mile canal, which spares ships having to travel an additional 7,000 miles around Cape Horn at South America’s southern tip.

“Twenty-four hours a day there was a line for as far as you can see of freighters,” Kayser said. “At night, it looks like its own island out there. This row of ships went on forever.”

Kayser said by being in Panama you can learn things you probably wouldn’t from a book. She met a woman whose father-in-law is a captain for the canal and found out that those captains steer every ship through the canal.

“So it doesn’t matter what your boat is or who you are, you are not allowed to drive your own boat through the Panama Canal. I had no idea about that,” she said.

They also learned about the influence of Chinese culture in Panama.

“I had no idea until I got down there,” Kayser said. “It’s just as much as the U.S. I had no idea. Most of their ports are owned by Chinese companies, and they’re building their own ports.”

O’Neill said it was the best conference she’s been to because she got to meet so many Spanish language teachers and exchange ideas and resources.

“It’s not just specific to the language that you’re teaching, but to the level that you are teaching,” O’Neill said.

Kayser said over the summer Culver’s Spanish team was rewriting some unit lessons, so she rewrote a unit about the seven tribes of Panama.

Kayser went to a presentation by Purdue professors that hasn’t been published yet about ways to teach certain aspects of grammar that students find difficult.

“They’re finding methods that connect different aspects of the brain and it sticks into students’ long-term memory. So it was cool to be at this conference before this research is released to the public. They led us through a workshop of, ‘This is how you do it,’ ” Kayser said. “That was really incredible.”

Other teachers shared reading activities and other lessons.

“It’s material we brought back and are incorporating for the whole department that we’ll all benefit from and students will benefit from,” Kayser said.