Class trips become life experiences
Experiential learning and travelling is the new norm for high school students
Ellen Taylor, a 17-year-old Grade 12 student at Toronto’s St. Clement’s School, has made two life-changing trips with the all-girls institution since starting there in Grade 9. In the summer of 2015, she and about a dozen other students taking native studies at the day school took part in the biannual, two-week trip to Moose Factory, Ont., at the southern end of James Bay. There, they met with people from the Moose Cree First Nation and volunteered at schools.
Then, in December 2015, Taylor and two other St. Clement’s girls went to Beng Melea in Cambodia for three weeks, where she helped renovate the local school, build a classroom and taught English to local kids aged 3 to 16. Both trips, she says, “put you out of your comfort zone, and you learn a lot about yourself.”
Among the many unforgettable moments was the girls’ departure from Moose Factory.
“We were speaking with Geraldine, an elder in the community, and she looked at all of us and started crying. We were all thinking, ‘Oh my goodness, did we culturally offend you or something?’ And she said, ‘You give me hope, hope for a better future, of a future with reconciliation.’ And I think that kind of tied the trip all together for me . . . It made me question my identity as a Canadian and how that plays into my actions.”
Welcome to the world of “experiential learning” through travel, which is increasingly prevalent — and popular — at private schools. Opportunities for cultural tours in Europe are still on offer at many in- stitutions, but more and more, children are being sent off to learn about the two world wars by visiting historic sites (a particular big trend this year with the centenary of the Battle of Vimy Ridge). Or they are performing community service abroad, rebuilding schools and/or dwellings destroyed by earthquakes or rains in Nepal and Zambia. Or they are meeting scientists and helping with conservation projects in South Africa, among other enriching and/or challenging expeditions.
“At an accelerating pace over the past five to 10 years, we’ve seen an increased focus on experiential learning and global citizenship,” says Matt Noble, president of EF Educational Tours Canada.
Noble adds that in planning student trips, many private schools now consider “how do we best create the right types of experiences for students where we’re going to provide them with an enjoyable trip, but also real-life skills, pushing them out of their comfort zone, encouraging them to look at the world from different perspectives and testing their communication skills? These are the kind of skills they will use their whole lives as global citizens and which can enhance applications to colleges and universities, enhance applications to future jobs.”
Noble adds while Europe used to be the standard private school destination, institutions now send students to Asia, Africa and Central and South America.
Parents, too, increasingly recognize the importance of teaching children to be global citizens, Noble says. That’s certainly true for Jane Taylor, a former public school teacher and Ellen’s mom.
She says she grew up in a family that liked to travel and experience other cultures; wanting more of that for Ellen was part of the attraction of St. Clement’s.
Her daughter came back from her trip to Cambodia, Taylor notes, “with a different way of looking at life and open to challenges. She was a little more confident.” And the earlier expedition to Moose Factory — Ellen had already taken a native studies course at the school, and since the trip has written several papers on indigenous issues — “affected her profoundly, and I think she’s become a champion of (aborginal people’s) rights.”
Louise Melville, co-ordinator of experiential education at St. Clement’s, says a number of students were so affected by their time in Moose Factory they went on to jobs related to indigenous peoples. The experiential learning of trips like that one and the school’s various journeys abroad —including one next month when students will help repair houses in Zambia —“are now embedded into our strategic plan.”
The cost of trips abroad — typically in the $5,000 range — has not “come up as an issue,” Melville says. The school does try to help out students who have received needs-based scholarships to go on St. Clement’s expeditions.
Trips at some schools are part of a course or courses. And some invite parents along. Dr. Laurie Wherrett, a surgeon in Oshawa, experienced both when she accompanied her daughter, Jacqueline Kendall, 16, now a Grade 11 student at co-ed Trinity College School (TCS) in Port Hope, Ont., on a tour of First and Second World War sites during March break last year.
It was part of Jacqueline’s Grade 10 English and history courses.
“It was a fantastic experience, probably one of the best trips I’ve ever taken,” says Wherrett, one of just two parents (the other was the wife of a TCS teacher) who went along with the 39 young people and four teachers on the tour. “I had a beautiful trip that was planned for me, chock full of activities, really interesting and I had no responsibilities.”
The group made their way through Belgium, France and Poland (where they visited Auschwitz). Both her children — Wherrett also has a son, who is in Grade 9 — are boarders at TCS, so mom got to see her daughter with her teachers and peers, a rare experience.
Mother and daughter “went to Juno Beach and walked together there. That was sort of an emotional trip. Sitting with her at Vimy, as well, it was a beautiful morning and the two of us could sit there together at the massive monument. That was lovely.”