Going Global, in a Nutshell

 

Note: This post is purposefully sprinkled with geography references and terminology so that I can assign it to my AP Human Geography class as an extra credit assignment; also, this is about traveling the world, which many of us are about to do, and, frankly, geography is just fun.

 

Despite the passage of a few decades, I can still recall the first time I ‘got out of the house,’ meaning traveled beyond the borders of the United States, on a .5-family trip (with my mother and two of my sisters) to our friendly neighbor to the north, Canada. I was a New York yout’ at the time, and before departing, I made certain to fill my pockets with as many Canadian pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters that I had in my possession (and maybe a couple I’d pinched from my sisters) because these coins had the audacity to be given to me as American change while at the same time being rejected by the Coke machine outside Dutchess  Surplus, a store down the street. Thus, a primary goal for me on this trip was to give back to Canada its mintage and maybe get a Canadian Sprite from them in return. One has to have goals when traveling abroad. That's my philosophy in a nutshell.

 

We didn’t fly to our destination; instead my mother drove us in her gold Oldsmobile Cutlass with the bench front seat at a speed consistently above the speed limit (on this trip, she was an international lead foot) straight up the Northway, taking a left somewhere across the St. Lawrence Seaway and just below Montreal to get us to our journey’s end on the border of Quebec and Ontario, in Ottawa, Canada’s beautiful capital city. My mother, who would, just a decade later, become a local politician elected to the position of Town Supervisor and two decades after that be installed as Town Historian, brought us to Parliament Hill, Rideau Hall, and a number of other historic sites because she wanted to and could; she was paying for that trip. I remember how cool it was to cross an international border for the first time, how beautiful Ottawa’s government buildings were, and how likely it was that I returned home with more Canadian coins than I left with and maybe the tiniest inkling of a more worldly aspect. That’s first time international travel in a nutshell.

 

I reminisce here because travel is on my mind, as both the domestic Middle School trips and the Upper School Winterim excursions launch this weekend or early next week—we are ‘getting out of the house’ for some exciting experiential learning and life adventures. Our students in grades 7-12 are amped up to travel the East Coast—to Washington, DC (our nation’s capital) and New York City (the capital of the world)—and to points on the globe in the Western Hemisphere in Central America, the Caribbean, and Europe—and they won’t be taking the Oldsmobile this time. But they will be negotiating the exigencies of travel, managing the mathematics of currency exchange, translating the signage and the spoken word of another language (even in London, blimey!) and exploring the cultural and physical landscapes of the world as we cross substate borders and state borders, gulfs and oceans, dominions and territories to gain a more worldly aspect. That’s international travel in a nutshell.

 

Our experiential education global travel program actually has its roots in a domestic Brimmer and May (not just Brimmer) Winterim program initiated in the 1990s and aimed at providing students with non-traditional, non-academic (outside of the classroom) learning experiences. Back in the day students stayed in closer proximity to or directly on the Brimmer campus to pursue a between-the-semesters, in-the-depths-of-winter (actually in January) Winterim activities program that included Auto Mechanics (how to build a car engine), Jewelry Making, Cooking, and Knitting, among other activities (even Writing Workshop—what?!) Clearly, this was before we determined to “…develop lifelong learners who are informed, engaged, and ethical citizens and leaders in our diverse world” through a globally focused academic program (which developed, naturally, following the changes in the world order of the early 1990’s when global history ended... and then suddenly re-began. But that’s another story…). And that’s the history of Winterim in a nutshell.

 

For Winterim, our students will travel some distance from home: 1679 miles to Puerto Rico; 2368 miles to Costa Rica; 2369 miles from Boston to Panama (does that mean those 2 trips will be only a mile apart? Nope, that’s bad math); 3271 miles to London; 3409 miles to Spain; 3745 miles to Switzerland; 4055 miles to Austria; and 4216 miles to Italy; and some will stay near home in Boston. The circumference of the Earth at the Equator is 24,901 miles—that’s really just a geography fact I slipped in there for edification (geography teacher work) and possibly juxtaposition (former English teacher work). Some will cross the Tropic of Cancer, and lots will cross the Prime Meridian. Cool, or actually, warm in the former instance. Many will cross the threshold of a life changing educational experience. That’s a Brimmer education in a nutshell.

 

Buoni viaggi!