Today's Topic: If money were no object, what experience(s) would you give your students?
TRAVEL.
TRAVEL! TRAVEL! TRAVEL!
The travel can start outside of the neighborhood, a new city, a new state. ANY experience that gets students to see a larger world view and perspective. With the USA being so big, I think we often get stuck in our own little spaces. How often do we (DO YOU?) get out of our comfort zones?
I don't think students necessarily need to leave the country to start expanding their cultural knowledge. I hadn't been to either coast until I was in college. Holy COW. SO different. East coast? I had never experienced so many different cultural groups that don't really exist in the Midwest. I had apparently never really seen real trees either; they towered over those in the Cook County forest preserves. I also thought the whole world was Catholic. I still have yet to visit Texas, and yet I have all these preconceived ideas that I hold to be true about that state.
Although never seeing a real tree until I was 20, I think I was ahead of the curve with growing up in inclusion model school districts. This afforded me to have Deaf friends, friends with autism, and encounters with students with all sorts of differences that I was able to add to my knowledge bank. I felt this left me more prepared for my future than others who seem to flounder when meeting people with varying cultural backgrounds and experiences.
Sometimes in my day-to-day encounters or in reading encounters of others on the news, I wonder how some people can be so seemingly closed-minded. Why as a populace are we so unwilling to see another's viewpoint, compromise, and move forward, better than we were before? Our perspectives are limited and focused on ourselves. ME. ME. ME. Broadening horizons can help this singular world, but is not the an answer in itself. Having traveled to a few different parts of the world myself I can say that the USA is not alone in sometimes being isolated from the new ideas and larger perspective of an international stage.
Although never seeing a real tree until I was 20, I think I was ahead of the curve with growing up in inclusion model school districts. This afforded me to have Deaf friends, friends with autism, and encounters with students with all sorts of differences that I was able to add to my knowledge bank. I felt this left me more prepared for my future than others who seem to flounder when meeting people with varying cultural backgrounds and experiences.
Sometimes in my day-to-day encounters or in reading encounters of others on the news, I wonder how some people can be so seemingly closed-minded. Why as a populace are we so unwilling to see another's viewpoint, compromise, and move forward, better than we were before? Our perspectives are limited and focused on ourselves. ME. ME. ME. Broadening horizons can help this singular world, but is not the an answer in itself. Having traveled to a few different parts of the world myself I can say that the USA is not alone in sometimes being isolated from the new ideas and larger perspective of an international stage.
I find that my peers that live in more cosmopolitan places, whether it be New York City or London, are often able to understand and transcend situations far quicker and with more breadth than others. I think they just encounter and learn to accept more difference on a daily basis based on their geography and that they have been afforded the opportunities to see many places and communities both near and far.
My Junior year of High School my AP English Teacher lead a class trip to Ireland. I'm not exactly sure how I pulled off going. To this day I still am not sure why my grandma agreed to foot the 2,5000$ bill as she wasn't overly well-off or generous, but the tables turned, and I am forever grateful for the opportunity. Just this one little step to a culture seemingly very similar to my own, made me realize just how different little things can be. It was actually my first time stepping foot in an Ocean. Other people don't eat cereal for breakfast? After seeing the beauty and peace of Ireland along with some sheep, castles and W.B. Yeats' grave, we traveled to Belfast and Northern Ireland. We toured a lot of old war zones, protest sites and memorials. People still seemed very bitter. I didn't have the maturity to realize at the time, I had to instead visit 8 years later, to understand that the reason it was so cold, dark, and dreary is because the people were recovering. It was 2003 the violence had literally JUST finally ended after decades two years previously.
During college I worked at a summer camp in Maine with staff from all over the world. We'd spend hours talking about our cultural differences and argue about important world issues like how to say "Adidas", "aluminum", and the proper word for using the "bathroom." Even talk like this opened up my perspective on how these individual lived somewhat different lives than I did.
By this time I thought I was a cultural expert. I had friends that were European and Japanese and Australian. Then, I arrived in Imsil, South Korea to teach English. I have never felt so uncomfortable in my entire life. These people had never in their lives seen an American. If they had, they weren't women with blue eyes and curly blonde hair. Everyone stared. Kids came up and literally petted me. Walking down the street, everyone would stop and stare. They literally turn all the way around. No amount of eye contact would make them avert their eyes. They'd keep going. For minutes. Someone told me the old men (ajusshis) who started the longest thought I was a Russian prostitute. It took me two weeks to leave my house alone and learn to ignore the stares. Here, in this very rural countryside, there were advertisements plastered everywhere for the best dog soup in town and where to go to sign-up for a mail-order bride. Men drank excessively. They beat their wives. I lived next to the dog cages and worked with a Filipino woman who married a Korean farmer to find a better life for herself. My life in the USA had been hard when I left. Korea was even harder for me. I'd complain. I stopped the day she told me she was willing to up and leave her 7 year old child to escape her life that wasn't much better than the one she had tried to escape in the Philippines. Perspective is worth more than anything.
I traveled to Japan and Hong Kong. I learned more about the World Wars in one afternoon in a museum in Hong Kong than I did in my entire school career. Why? The story wasn't told from the American perspective. I also understood why some older Koreans hated the Japanese so, so very much. Their wounds were still raw, 50 years later. I never really understood the gravity of those wars and their impact on REAL people. After this museum visit I remember wondering...how could I make the world and it's history come alive to my students? Do they really have to be 24 and traveling alone in Asia to understand these things?
I have been plenty of places, places I couldn't have dreamed of going as a high schooler. I literally remember standing in the Dublin airport saying I will never, ever be here again. I was wrong.
I know I am not an expert. There are so many places I haven't been, would like to go, or wouldn't. Yet, my worldview is broad. Ok, I like to think it is, I want it to be, I try to make it so. I try to see the world from the viewpoint of others. I try to understand their lived experiences, their opinions and how they've come to hold them. So often we look at the world in black and white, right and wrong, republican and democrat, good and evil, our side and their side. We try and put our encounters and experiences into their appropriate boxes. They are the good guys and those are the bad guys. Why? Says who? Having the ability to step back and examine and weigh all the facts, all the biases, and all the history before drawing an independent conclusion, doesn't happen as often as it should. I would say hardly ever on the nightly or morning news cycles.
This openness, this questioning, weighing different viewpoints, that perspective is what our students need. This is REALLY what Common Core Standards are trying to get at. Yet, without these real-world experiences, whatever they turn out to be, I think many students are really missing out. I think the more experiences and variety we can provide students with, even if the deeper understandings also require maturity, the better and more productive WORLD citizens they can and will become.
My Junior year of High School my AP English Teacher lead a class trip to Ireland. I'm not exactly sure how I pulled off going. To this day I still am not sure why my grandma agreed to foot the 2,5000$ bill as she wasn't overly well-off or generous, but the tables turned, and I am forever grateful for the opportunity. Just this one little step to a culture seemingly very similar to my own, made me realize just how different little things can be. It was actually my first time stepping foot in an Ocean. Other people don't eat cereal for breakfast? After seeing the beauty and peace of Ireland along with some sheep, castles and W.B. Yeats' grave, we traveled to Belfast and Northern Ireland. We toured a lot of old war zones, protest sites and memorials. People still seemed very bitter. I didn't have the maturity to realize at the time, I had to instead visit 8 years later, to understand that the reason it was so cold, dark, and dreary is because the people were recovering. It was 2003 the violence had literally JUST finally ended after decades two years previously.
During college I worked at a summer camp in Maine with staff from all over the world. We'd spend hours talking about our cultural differences and argue about important world issues like how to say "Adidas", "aluminum", and the proper word for using the "bathroom." Even talk like this opened up my perspective on how these individual lived somewhat different lives than I did.
By this time I thought I was a cultural expert. I had friends that were European and Japanese and Australian. Then, I arrived in Imsil, South Korea to teach English. I have never felt so uncomfortable in my entire life. These people had never in their lives seen an American. If they had, they weren't women with blue eyes and curly blonde hair. Everyone stared. Kids came up and literally petted me. Walking down the street, everyone would stop and stare. They literally turn all the way around. No amount of eye contact would make them avert their eyes. They'd keep going. For minutes. Someone told me the old men (ajusshis) who started the longest thought I was a Russian prostitute. It took me two weeks to leave my house alone and learn to ignore the stares. Here, in this very rural countryside, there were advertisements plastered everywhere for the best dog soup in town and where to go to sign-up for a mail-order bride. Men drank excessively. They beat their wives. I lived next to the dog cages and worked with a Filipino woman who married a Korean farmer to find a better life for herself. My life in the USA had been hard when I left. Korea was even harder for me. I'd complain. I stopped the day she told me she was willing to up and leave her 7 year old child to escape her life that wasn't much better than the one she had tried to escape in the Philippines. Perspective is worth more than anything.
I traveled to Japan and Hong Kong. I learned more about the World Wars in one afternoon in a museum in Hong Kong than I did in my entire school career. Why? The story wasn't told from the American perspective. I also understood why some older Koreans hated the Japanese so, so very much. Their wounds were still raw, 50 years later. I never really understood the gravity of those wars and their impact on REAL people. After this museum visit I remember wondering...how could I make the world and it's history come alive to my students? Do they really have to be 24 and traveling alone in Asia to understand these things?
I have been plenty of places, places I couldn't have dreamed of going as a high schooler. I literally remember standing in the Dublin airport saying I will never, ever be here again. I was wrong.
I know I am not an expert. There are so many places I haven't been, would like to go, or wouldn't. Yet, my worldview is broad. Ok, I like to think it is, I want it to be, I try to make it so. I try to see the world from the viewpoint of others. I try to understand their lived experiences, their opinions and how they've come to hold them. So often we look at the world in black and white, right and wrong, republican and democrat, good and evil, our side and their side. We try and put our encounters and experiences into their appropriate boxes. They are the good guys and those are the bad guys. Why? Says who? Having the ability to step back and examine and weigh all the facts, all the biases, and all the history before drawing an independent conclusion, doesn't happen as often as it should. I would say hardly ever on the nightly or morning news cycles.
This openness, this questioning, weighing different viewpoints, that perspective is what our students need. This is REALLY what Common Core Standards are trying to get at. Yet, without these real-world experiences, whatever they turn out to be, I think many students are really missing out. I think the more experiences and variety we can provide students with, even if the deeper understandings also require maturity, the better and more productive WORLD citizens they can and will become.
I wrote about traveling as well! Very well said!
ReplyDelete