TRAVEL IS IMPORTANT
Since 2011, the Passport Club of Waynesboro has provided opportunities for international educational travel. More passports=more travel=more aware. Set a goal, join one of our trips, and use your passport to educate yourself! Passport Club
Waynesboro High School Organizing Sponsor: Tim Wion [email protected] Established 2011 Goal: The Passport Club shall provide annual opportunities for international educational travel. Philosophy: International travel is a transformative experience, inspiring new perspectives about our world with its vibrant diversity of people and cultures. Students who choose to travel view themselves differently and are empowered by their new insights. Travel is one of the best possible forms of education. Universities have been expanding their offerings for semesters abroad as they realize it is likely that students will be working across international borders, and are also enticed to accept those students who have a broader world-view. Simply put, providing evidence of international travel is a positive resume builder. Gaining an understanding of how other nations view the United States enhances the relationship between these countries. Questions submitted by Giant Word: Why did you create the Passport Club? What are the benefits of world travel for students? How do students get money or raise money for their trip? How does the Passport Club help the WHS community? (Responses by Tim Wion, Passport Club Organizing Sponsor) When the idea for the Passport Club was just starting to enter my consciousness in 2011, I had been sharing pictures and stories with my ninth grade classes from my travels--one of the pursuits in life I have found exceptionally gratifying--and some of the conversations went quickly from the pictures to students claiming that they would be scared to travel to a foreign country. Students freely shared that people were “different” in foreign countries, that the people may not speak English there, and that they would feel “uncomfortable.” That was the day I made the decision to create opportunities for WHS students to travel each spring. Despite what some people may fear, most people are kind, helpful, generous, gracious, and peace-loving. My fear and my uncomfortableness occur when young people have irrational, uninformed opinions which keep them from participating in one of life’s most exciting adventures—learning that different is eye-opening, tasty, puzzling, rewarding, marvelous, stimulating—and that this realization happens inside you each time you travel. I have my guesses about why young people may hold these opinions, and most of my guesses go back to the lack of experiences they have had so far in their lives and the sources of information which forms their perceptions. That is, they have not traveled. They have not felt the sincere want to know how to speak a foreign language. They have not considered why people in foreign countries demand and prepare fresh food. They have not thought about how a national rail system might change people’s lives. They have not considered that there may be cultures in the world that do things that make more sense than the way we do things. They also do not know what it feels like to come home after being away. The ripple we have started by creating the Passport Club is beginning to change perceptions in Waynesboro regarding international travel. After years of steady work, presentations to the school board, community groups, and dozens of parents of potential student travelers, our 2017 France and England trip filled within one week of its launch back in the spring of 2015. Our student travelers have become our student ambassadors as they have returned after spring break with mind-blowing, fantastic tales of their new insights and adventures. Students who return from trips have an obvious and often intense change in how they view their studies, most immediately in the foreign languages, arts, and history, but also tend to increase their academic performance across most subjects. For Passport Club travelers, much of this may have to do with being motivated or finding a purpose. But here’s the thing that people who travel have noticed for centuries and in the last year is being supported by brain research: The act and process of travel actually opens new pathways in the brain. http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/03/for-a-more-creative-brain-travel/388135/ As teachers we see students take what they have experienced and help create dynamic learning environments for their peers when they return. This sharing takes many forms. One traveler sitting in her first art class in college related that she watched in amazement as the lecture and powerpoint of the great renaissance artists was about many of the works she had seen in person with the Passport Club just a few months before. She was able to connect immediately with her professor and relate not only about those things she saw, but how she felt being there. Another traveler has decided to continue with as much foreign language as can fit in her high school schedule and possibly go on with a Spanish degree in college. This one student’s dedication to her studies can inspire those around her to go for it as well. Too often, perhaps, students see how many credits are required for graduation and “get their foreign language credits over with.” Travel absolutely alters those views as we realize how much more of the world we could experience with another language or two in our repertoire. The Passport Club Leadership team is also enhancing the WHS classroom experience by selecting faculty chaperones (FC) to assist with the educational travel trips. If one student with travel experience can affect a few classes they happen to be in, then a teacher in the classroom can affect hundreds of students per year with the new insights they have gained by integrating their experience into a lesson which aligns with their curriculum. For example, faculty chaperone Ms. Laliberte used her interest in literature and the American Shakespeare Center in Staunton to help facilitate a visit to the site of the Globe Theatre in London. Those experiences which enrich teachers also enrich the lives of the students in their classes. The reaction of many students to an international trip is often dismissive, followed by a litany of perceived roadblocks which may seem like viable excuses if they truly just do not want to go. However, for those students so inclined, setting the huge goal of going on a life-changing trip with friends leads to a cascade of positive consequences for behavior and goal setting which is unmatched in scope. One of those positives is a focus on entrepreneurialism. In order to go on an international trip, one must find a way to pay for it. Student travelers have put away the games of their past and figured out how they can be helpful in their communities. This has taken the form of yard-care businesses, dog-sitting services, job applications being filled out for service positions at local restaurants, extra shifts as a lifeguard, coaching, manual labor, garage sales, and refereeing for youth soccer, among many more. One of the things that drives good employees is that those employees have a goal and really want to work. One of the benefits for young people going through the process of finding or creating income with the goal of a trip is that these students are also building skills and resumes. Besides a refocusing how to spend time, Passport Club members also adjust how they spend money. Many students are surprised, for example, how much they spend in one week just buying food from a restaurant rather than preparing food at home. For example, in a food journal kept by a group of recently graduated seniors, the average amount of money spent eating away from home per day was $6.30 with a range of $9.25 to $3.45. For perspective, the Passport Club’s trip to Spain in 2018 was introduced early so that there was a cost of $7 per day to pay for the trip. Students who set a goal can “find” money by deciding how that money gets used. Student-travelers have also noticed that annual gifts they may receive at holidays or birthdays can be directed toward their trip, and in a few cases the inspiration of their trip seemed to increase the generosity of the people gifting them. The Waynesboro Community was so supportive of the Passport Club’s purpose and philosophy that an anonymous donor created the William Henry Sheppard Scholarship which is administered through the Community Foundation and supports students who are signed up to travel with a competitive scholarship based upon academic merit and financial need. http://cfcbr.org/william-henry-sheppard-scholarship-program/ The goal of providing the opportunity for international travel for WHS through the Passport Club has become a reality. Even if students are unable to go on a Passport Club trip during their time in school, we are encouraging WHS students to get their passports and become comfortable with the idea that they can travel. I hope that the dedicated work of the leadership team continues to shape and inform student realities in school and that our community benefits from the international insights these student travelers bring home. We hope to travel with you during your time at Waynesboro High School! Tim Wion Passport Club Organizing Sponsor, Group Leader Italy 2015, Spain 2018, Japan 2020 LET'S GO!
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |