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Name: Alice Day Brown
Class: 2012
Hometown: Winston-Salem, N.C.
Major: Elementary Education
Minor: Spanish
Some students choose to study or work abroad to learn about different cultures, practice a language or explore a new part of the world. For Alice Day Brown, a month-long trip to Costa Rica after her freshman year in the summer of 2009 did much more.
Brown, who is also co-chair for UNC’s Habitat for Humanity chapter and a member of Chi Omega, said she taught English to elementary school children from rural high-poverty families who worked in the country’s coffee fields.
One child she taught was the youngest of eight brothers and was typically violent around the other teachers. She said one moment with him stood out to her after he got frustrated on a worksheet and ran out of the classroom. She said she followed him outside despite the other teachers’ warnings about his behavior.
“I found him sitting against the wall feeling frustrated,” Brown said. “When I sat down…he just crawled onto my lap and just started crying. This tough kid just broke down when someone gave him the attention he deserved.”
The elementary school had an open-air structure and had no playground for the students but was surrounded by the coffee fields where their families worked. Brown said the children went to school for half of the day before running into the fields to join their parents in harvesting coffee beans. She said the environment there was very different compared to the United States.
“The futures of the children are really different,” she said. “They weren’t really preparing children for college as much as they were preparing them to work with families in agriculture.”
Despite these differences, however, her work in Costa Rica proved crucial to finding her life calling. “That’s when I knew I wanted to spend my life teaching,” she said about her experience there. “It’s inspiring to know that you can transform a child’s life by being a teacher.”
Brown plans to become a first grade teacher, and currently works with first-graders at Morris Grove Elementary School in Chapel Hill.
Eric Pesale: What’s your favorite Franklin Street eatery or bar, and why?
Alice Day Brown: Not to be boring, but I really like Top of the Hill because of the porch; you can look down and see Chapel Hill from above. I get cheese pizza a lot there.
EP: How would you describe the ideal perfect day?
ADB: It would be great to be able to spend time in an elementary school classroom in the morning, and then maybe going to Habitat in the afternoon or spending time with Habitat families, and then doing stuff at night with my friends like going out to eat or to a movie and relaxing.
EP: What’s your most embarrassing moment?
ADB: When a news crew came to our Habitat Blitz Build on MLK weekend in 2011, I was interviewed. When I watched the interview on the news, I could see as I was talking that I was very expressive with my hands. They were flailing all over the place.
EP: What’s your biggest fear?
ADB: Having a student whom you weren’t quite sure what to do with or help them achieve what they’re capable of achieving.
EP: What’s your favorite song?
ADB: I’m a big fan of Waka-Waka by Shakira right now, since I was studying abroad in Barcelona when Spain won the World Cup. It was crazy! I’ve never seen more people or fireworks going off in the street.
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