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| a teen's view of the white house . . . |
What is the best age for kids to travel? It could be argued that travel is good for a
person at any age. The benefits of travel, whether within the U.S. or abroad,
are wide ranging. The opportunity to see the world beyond your comfortable
circumference opens your eyes and your mind. It increases tolerance and fosters
understanding. It doesn’t have to be a far away land, world trekking adventure
that makes a difference in your life. Travel and education are invariably
intertwined. Even a trip across town can be educational if coupled with the right
mindset.
You go. You learn. You come back home with a little more
understanding of how the world works, how it got to be the way it is, and you
lose a bit of the fear of the unknown, because after traveling to a place, its
not so unknown.
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| viewing the canyons of southern California |
Traveling as a family, whether the children are toddlers or
teens, enriches us all. The time spent together, of course, is important, but
the shared experiences are what make traveling with your family something that
binds you. You create memories that serve to connect you as a family. It’s not
necessarily the big things – visiting the monuments and historic sites – that
make the journey a series of lessons.
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| on the ferry to the statue of liberty, with Manhattan in the background. |
Just the process of a trip, from the
planning to the unpacking, is an educational experience. In the planning stages,
it may well be the adults that make the decisions about the where and the when,
but as a parent, you know you don’t make those choices without taking your
children into consideration, whether you ask for their opinions or not. Their
age level, abilities and interests determine so much of the logistics of
travel. Will they be able to handle being in an airport for a 3 hour layover
without having a meltdown? Can they carry their own luggage? Would an
additional day or two in a particular city allow you to visit the sites you
know they’d love?
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| calling home from a pay phone in Mexico |
My friend Tom is an eighth grade history teacher. When we
asked him at what age he thought that a child would benefit most from visiting
historical sites, he quickly answered that the years between seventh and tenth
grades are best for educational travel. His answer comes from knowing that the
curriculum in those grades revolves around the history of western civilization
in broad terms. In school, kids learn about the wars and the cultures of the
ages that have determined life as we know it. They don’t always see it that
way, but a good teacher can make all the difference. A good teacher makes it
fun to learn, striving to make a connection between the student and the point
in history being taught. I’m sure that in today’s world, full of buzzing and
bells, screen time and constant stimulation, a student’s ability to grasp onto
a piece of what brought us to this point in history is diminished by the noise.
The way to get through the din is to create a connection and one of the best
ways to do that is by experiencing history on a more organic, tactical level,
through travel.
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| the Gettysburg Address at the Lincoln Memorial |
Though history is well documented, augmented and argued,
it’s tough to make it stick without an association to it. It all seems so long
ago and far away. That’s where travel can have a huge impact. Take the bits of
the history that trickle through the chaos of middle and high schools, mix it
with a hands on experience with the place where history happened and you have a
bona fide connection that translates to learning, whether they realize it or
not.
And it’s not just in the case of history. There’s poetry to
be absorbed in Edgar Allen Poe’s city of Baltimore.
There’s science, meteorology, archeology to be see at Mount
St Helens. You can "feel the flutter" of the butterfly enclosure at the Smithsonian's Natural History Museum. There are Mayan ruins on the high cliffs above the
Caribbean beaches of the Yucatan in Mexico.
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| Immigrant's luggage at Ellis Island |
The grade levels that my friend Tom suggested are often a
point in between the first exposure a kid has to a particular event and the
more detailed study that happens in the later grades. When my daughter was in
the fourth grade, her class did an extended project on Ellis
Island. The students were first taught about the countries that
were the homes of immigrants arriving there and had to select a character from
them. My daughter chose a girl from the French countryside. They next had to
research clothing from the time period so that they could portray their
characters and tell their stories as applied to entering the U.S. at Ellis Island.
On presentation day, families were invited to the classrooms of the fourth
graders, where each class was a different station in the process of entry.
Students, dressed in costume, told tales of their journeys and what they may
have brought from their home countries, of hardships endured and of hope for
the future.
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| entry ledger at Ellis Island |
Fast forward nearly four years and to our visit this past
summer to Ellis Island. My husband, daughter
and I arrived at Ellis Island by ferry from Liberty
State Park in New Jersey. Upon entering the building, we
took advantage of the free audio tour available. First exhibit: a considerable
stack of luggage; trunks, satchels, crates and baskets served to illustrate
methods of containment for immigrant’s precious items brought to this new world
that we would see later on in the tour. We stood in the entry hall, heard
voices and sounds as they were so many years ago. Medical exams and educational
assessment, white tiled rooms that divided families and generations, stories of
so many lives that passed through there. We saw graffiti on the walls left by
people who waited there to be notified of their acceptance. The building and
the grounds were overwhelming with sounds and promise. Towards the end of the
tour, exhibits of propaganda posters and governmental advocacy highlighted the
turning of the public against free immigration, some calling out to stop the
onslaught, to essentially build a wall. It taught us all that the struggles of
Americans and of those who wish to be Americans look and sound must as they do
now, only different ports of entry and different countries of origin.
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| Liberty has her flame; my daughter her phone |
My daughter moved on ahead of us in the tour, anxious for
the next chapter. It was hard to keep up with her. When eighth grade began this
fall, she was excited to tell me that they will be studying Ellis
Island in her social studies class and that she stopped by the
teacher’s desk on her way out of class that first day to tell him that she had
been there. Yesterday she told me how much she likes her social studies class
this year, which thrilled me since it’s been a subject she’s struggled with in
the past.
It is expected when visiting historic sites that some
education seeps in. One would hope that would happen.
But there’s more to travel that educates on a whole
different level.
The exposure to people, places, food, methods of transport,
cultural expectations, and societal differences whether two states removed from
home or half way around the world has an impact on the way a kid views life
from there on in. If it removes even one layer of fear travel is worthwhile.
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| Learning patience at the airport - both parties here needed the education. |
There are lessons along the way that as adults we might glaze over. Reading
maps and road signs, maneuvering through an airport, checking into a hotel,
riding a subway, hailing a cab, skyscrapers and projects, backyards of chickens
and goats and donkeys that roam freely, landscapes that surprise in their
variation, there are so many nuances of living on this planet that are a little
less intimidating when you’ve experienced them yourself. You might be surprised
at the things that kids notice on a journey. You might also learn something
yourself.
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| a little fun with distortion . . Liberty perched high above. |
In my travel experiences with my family, we’ve found that
the memories and experience gained far outweigh any concerns about the costs.
We all look at the Statue of Liberty a bit differently now that we’ve been
there and stood at her feet as she gazes out over the harbor. We laugh about
the outburst of a fellow passenger on the small ferry we took from Manhattan to New
Jersey. The three of us reminisce about the awesome
handmade tacos we had at the tiny restaurant in the jungle when we visited an
attraction nearby. When we see the Hollywood sign on the hills above Los Angeles, we remember
that twisty narrow road we took to get up as close to it as you can drive and
the haze that hung over the city in the heat that day. We’ve often seen a
location in a movie or on TV that we visited in the canyons of California where
directors use the unusually shaped boulders as backdrop for scenes that range
from the Flintstones to Armageddon.
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| Is it Bedrock or an alien planet? This canyon has been both. |
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| at Madame Tusseau's she got to meet Will Smith . . sort of |
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| Hollywood behind her, the future is bright |
The point is that travel changes you for the better. It
educates, illuminates, and connects us to one another. It diminishes fears and
increases confidence and understanding. With such focus in the coming months on
giving, it could be an opportunity to give an experience rather than a thing.
No you can’t hold an adventure in your hands and squirrel it away for safe
keeping. You can end up possessing much more and having a deeper understanding
and connection to the world around us and to your family.
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| Civil rights lesson at the Smithsonian |
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| Mr. Moose and Bunny Rabbit were certainly part of MY history. |
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| Earlier entertainment |
That’s a gift too big to wrap. Travel is the only thing we
can buy that makes us richer.
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| On Ellis Island |
Just a few of the things teens can learn from travelling:
- Exchanging money – the US dollar vs the world’s currencies.
- Overcoming or adapting to language barriers by necessity; i.e. having to ask where the bathroom is or ordering food in a restaurant.
- Differences and similarities in foods, dress styles, architecture, and transportation.
- That the landscapes and terrain may be worlds apart in a different part of the country or the world but a smile is universal.
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| holding up the Washington Monument |
My daughter has been invited to participate in a student
ambassador program next summer that will include her in a group of teens from
the area traveling to the United
Kingdom. The group will visit England, Scotland,
Wales, and both Northern Ireland and Ireland. They will participate in
educational activities, confidence and team building exercises, some community
service, a home stay with a local family, and even get a tour of Parliament in London by a member of
Parliament. The program is run through People to People. Students who
participate are responsible to raise the funds needed. Therefore she and I have
been exploring fundraising initiatives, such as bake sales. Follow her progress
at www.follownolasjourney.blogspot.com.
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