Monday marked the beginning of Spring Break for many public schools, but a handful of students from the Washington D.C. area won't opt for the traditional break on a beach this year.
Instead, an upwards of a dozen pupils from alternative school Washington Metropolitan High, along with School Without Walls, will travel to West Africa, in a move that most teachers say will impart lessons upon the kids they would never learn in a classroom.
"Travel has been my best teacher," Koura Gibson, leader of the trip and French teacher at Washington Metropolitan, told the Washington Post. "Go away and you'll grow up. I'm always encouraging my students to get out of here, leave D.C."
The students will speak French in Dakar, traverse Senegal's Lake Retba, and experience a life they might not encounter back in the states in the Casamance region, reports the Post.
For the kids, most of whom have never set foot on a plane, the most important lesson will be simply learned by traveling. They'll be plunged into a completely new experience in foreign lands.
Similar schools in the area are following suit. At nearby Alice Deal Middle School, students will have the opportunity to go on three different trips to France, Costa Rica, or China.
More than 100 eighth-graders have signed up for the excursion.
Principal James Albright acknowledged the enriching elements of travel through practicing language skills, but more importantly, by bonding.
"You have conversations with a kid you would never in school," he said. "You're sitting on a bus for two hours, two people having the same experience. It becomes an entirely different kind of relationship."
Writer Elena Sonnino agrees with the widespread notion that travel is one of the best ways to learn something new, even going so far as to say that children might do well being pulled out of school to travel.
In her article, "Why Travel Trumps the Classroom," the former teacher writes, "...beyond the classroom, the world has so mucht o offer when it comes to educating our children to become 21st century thinkers."
This article is copyrighted by Travelers Today, the travel news leader
