Beacon School South AfricaStudy abroad is no longer just reserved for college students. More high school students than ever are getting the chance to study overseas, whether it’s a one-week summer trip to urban London, or a month-long sojourn in rural Ghana.

And from these travels, some truly inspirational stories are born. Kids who may never have ventured beyond the borders of their hometowns are experiencing the world from a global perspective.

Here we profile five ordinary public schools (and school districts) from across America, all of which have very different but equally amazing travel programs that can serve as a model for what’s possible at any school.

BEACON SCHOOL

The Beacon School in Manhattan is a public liberal arts magnet school whose theme is “inquiry-based learning.” When history teacher Bayard Faithfull came up with the idea of taking his students on a travel/learn trip four years ago, he was intent on making sure the trip fulfilled the school’s mandate by connecting book learning with real-world experiences.

So in 2005 Faithfull built a trip around a topic the class was studying: apartheid. That year marked the 10th anniversary of the end the oppressive system that had hobbled South Africa. He took 32 seniors there so they could visit sites that were instrumental in the fall of apartheid, and meet with different groups that had created change in the country.

Other teachers loved Faithfull’s idea and quickly started their own trips, all of which depart during February and April term breaks and take place in the context of a particular class and subject matter.

The school’s drama classes regularly go to London to study Shakespeare and see performances in Stratford-upon-Avon, and language classes regularly travel to Spain and France to become totally immersed in those languages.

Non-recurring trips include a 2007 trek to the San Diego-Mexico border, where a social studies class learned about immigrant rights; in 2008 31 students from an elective class on Indian culture went to India and lived with families, visited schools, and learned about the culture and customs; also in 2008 a science class went to Costa Rica to study tropical ecology. There have been trips to Venezuela, New Orleans, Finland and Russia as well. Future treks are planned to Mozambique and Brazil.

Beacon School Cape Town South AfricaStudents are responsible for raising their own funds. There is a different formula for each child, but it’s usually a combination of summer jobs and class-wide book sales or bake sales. Parents often pay for some part of the trip, and scholarships are available for kids who need them.

www.beaconschool.org

PORT CHARLOTTE HIGH SCHOOL

For 20 years Port Charlotte High School on the west coast of Florida has been doing educational summer tours worldwide. World history and religions teacher Bob Johnson, with the help of EF Educational Tours, has been taking up to 50 students at a time to tried-and-true locations in Europe, as well as edgier places like Bosnia, Kenya, Russia, Turkey, Tunisia, Croatia, Romania, Bulgaria, and Thailand.

Twelve years ago, during one trip to a developing nation, some of the kids took note of how little money the local artisans made from selling their wares, and took the initiative to do something about it. Back at home the students obtained grant money, partnered with the Fair Trade Federation, and opened their own “fair trade market.”

The market started out as a makeshift store on campus that sold items out of a small office. Now they’ve progressed to an extensive catalog and a storefront at the mall where they sell up to $175,000 worth of items during the holidays.

The students also run a “mobile market” that makes presentations to churches and civic organizations in order to educate the community about the struggle of artisans. They remind people that every $1000 in sales keeps one family solvent for a year in the developing world.

The fair trade project and the overseas trips are so popular that students often save money for years in advance in order to go. Kids are responsible for raising all of their own money as the school does not pay for overseas travel. Eighty percent of the cost is self-funded through summer jobs, parents, grandparents, carwashes, bake sales, and church group donations. The other 20 percent comes from presentations to civic organizations and clubs, where donations are solicited.

Though Port Charlotte is currently the only school in America that’s a member of the Fair Trade Federation, it may not be so for long. Johnson reports that a couple of other schools have contacted him about how to start their own fair trade stores, so he may try to franchise out the concept.

In the meantime, the students continue to travel and expand their horizons … and the store. In summer 2010, Johnson plans to take a group to Spain, Portugal and Morocco, where the students, when they’re not engaging in cultural and educational activities, will continue to seek out more wares to add to their catalog and more merchants to help.

www.portcharlottehigh.net
www.eftours.com

C.K. MCCLATCHY HIGH SCHOOL

C.K. McClatchy’s high school’s study abroad program was first conceived eight years ago when a teacher from the Sacramento, California school traveled to West Africa on a Fulbright scholarship, and decided he wanted to develop something for students’ education.

The idea finally came to fruition five years later through a partnership with the Sacramento-based non-profit AfriPeace & Development Foundation. For the past three years students have been going on trips to West Africa during the summer between their sophomore and juniors years. The trips complement their studies on Africa and Latin America, which are offered through the school’s extensive humanities program.

The kids visit several parts of Nigeria and Ghana to experience both rural and urban areas, and stay with families for short periods. The program includes debates and discussions with West African students, as well as meetings with public officials, religious leaders and human rights activists.

Students participate in 100 hours of pre-trip preparation, including conflict-resolution workshops, fundraisers and general education about the areas.

During the first year of the program, despite the preparation and assurances of teachers, some parents were reluctant to send their children to Africa—especially to Nigeria, which has a history of crime and violence. Six students were pulled out the first year. However, the parents’ fears turned out to be unfounded and the program continues to grow, with 15 students traveling this past summer.

C.K. McClatchy is a mixed-income school, where students are across the board in terms of socioeconomic and ethnic backgrounds. To raise money for their travels the students embarked on a letter campaign and held car washes, bake sales, and raffles.

In addition to funding the students’ airfare, the money was also used to help build and stock a library for a secondary school in Nigeria. And this past year in Ghana, the students used $2000 to buy sand, cement blocks, food stuffs, cement mix, carrying bowls and clothing to donate to local families.

https://schools.scusd.edu/ckmcclatchy/home
www.afripeace.org

TECHBOSTON ACADEMY

Tech Boston travelAt TechBoston Academy in Dorchester, Massachusetts, the realities of racism and anti-Semitism come to life when students travel to Europe to visit the sites of some of the worst atrocities of the twentieth century.

Through the school’s Facing History & Ourselves program, students spend the school year learning about racism and prejudice through the history of the Holocaust, the civil rights movement and the Armenian genocide. Classes are taught by both a history and English teacher and convey the stark reality of history through lectures, historical novels and memoirs.

During the summer the kids travel to Europe where they visit places such as Checkpoint Charlie, and the Dachau and Auschwitz concentration camps. In Paris they meet concentration camp survivors for a question and answer session. The program, which is now in its fourth year, took 24 students to eight cities in 13 days last year. During their travels, students keep an account of their experiences through their blog, https://tbafhao.edublogs.org.

TechBoston’s students, most of whom are financially disadvantaged, use a variety of different and creative fund-raising methods throughout the year to scrape together money for their trips.

A student-run coffee shop at the front of the school sells refreshments in the morning to teachers and nets about $7,000 a year. An annual golf tournament brings in another $5,000 a year.

But that’s not all: students solicit for donations at busy intersections around Boston; they sell candy, wrapping paper, and magazine subscriptions; conduct letter campaigns to friends and family members; set up a donation page on the school’s Web site; and they even take their pleas to the skyscrapers of downtown Boston, where they solicit sponsorships from local businesses.

www.techboston.org
https://tbafhao.edublogs.org

CHICAGO PUBLIC SCHOOL DISTRICT

Chicago Public Schools (CPS) stands at the forefront of the nation in terms of Chinese language instruction. CPS offers the largest Chinese program of any district in the country, with 43 schools teaching Chinese to 10,000 students from kindergarten through the 12th grade.

Chicago public school abroadBob Davis, manager, of the World Language Program and International Studies at CPS, said that the program was instituted to prepare students for college, and to increase their post-college marketability in an increasingly globalized economy.

To complement their language studies, for the last two summers the district has been organizing six-week summer trips to Shanghai, China. The program is very competitive and is only open to juniors who have taken at least three years of Chinese classes.

While in Shanghai, students study at East China Normal University. The academic program is very intense and academically-focused and includes four to five hours a day of classes on Chinese culture, language, film and other topics. Students stay in dorms on campus where they each have a Chinese roommate.

For two weeks the students do a homestay with a Chinese family for a fully immersive experience. They also take a weekend trip to Beijing, and visit local businesses run by expats to see the practical applications of the Chinese language.

Davis says the program shows students what role they can play in the world, and both directly and indirectly helps them learn what they are capable of.

For example, one Latino student who recently participated in the China trip said Davis was the first person who ever talked to him about going to college.

The program is funded by a year-to-year grant from the State Department’s National Security Language Initiative. The NSLI is a project that was started after Sept. 11, 2001 to strengthen national security and prosperity by promoting learning of Arabic, Chinese, Russian, Hindi, and Farsi.

www.cps.k12.il.us

By Karen Elowitt for PeterGreenberg.com.

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