By Raúl Gavarrette O.
Almost at the end of the 90´s Nicaragua experienced a tourist boom and became more popular as a new destination for tourism in Central America, and entrepreneurs from North America were attracted by the potential Nicaragua had. In 1997, a new language school Project was started in Nicaragua by entrepreneur Paul Martin from the United States, and Nicaraguan, local entrepreneur, Professor Raúl Gavarrette, who became the Nicaraguan representative and Executive Coordinator of the schools. Paul did the marketing is USA. This new project was called Nicaragua Spanish Schools (NSS).
Since the beginning NSS intended to be an international agency to represent and focus on marketing the already established Nicaraguan Spanish schools in Estelí, Managua, Granada and Laguna de Apoyo. NSS agreed with the Spanish schools to open an office in the United States and a branch in Nicaragua to represent them.
Due to many facts this enterprise was unsuccessfully and soon later, Paul and Raúl, the NSS team changed the strategy and decided to open their own Spanish language schools in San Juan del Sur, Granada and León. That is when in 1997 they started the first Spanish language school in beautiful San Juan del Sur. Professor Gavarrette moved temporary to San Juan del Sur to set up the school. The language school was named San Juan del Sur Spanish School.
The first assigned Director, by decision of NSS team, was María Dolores Silva, a certified and experienced high school Spanish teacher from San Juan del Sur. That school was located in the Escuela Integral de Cultura just across from the Ocean. The former Spanish instructors were Carmen Rizo, Carmen Victor, Rosa Silva and Marta Calderón. Since that same year, Raul Gavarrette, NSS Executive National Coordinator started continuous training workshops in administration and management of the school, setting up excursions, organization of cultural activities, and general arrangement, language teaching technique workshops for Spanish as a second language, as well. The Spanish school staff was trained in preparation for the arrival of the first group of high school students from the USA in January 1998.
