Teacher plans trip, lesson of a lifetime

European travels help open young people's eyes to different cultures, educator says

Sandi Bonesteel, an information technology teacher at the school, plans to take a still-undetermined number of students on a 10-day tour of Germany and France next summer, in hopes of exposing them to other cultures and expanding their horizons.

"We use their transportation, their language, their food, their schedule and we see how other people live, and their differences," she explained. "Students see that the way we do business, the way we run our restaurants, the way we do our traffic control, there are very good ways to do all of that differently. We shouldn't be so ethnocentric."

The trip, which like any overnight journey abroad is not officially endorsed by Frederick County Public Schools, is one of several Bonesteel has helped coordinate, and past participants say it was a great experience.

Elaine Lightner, an English Language Learner teacher at West Frederick Middle School, brought a group of students, along with Bonesteel, on a tour of Paris and Italy in 2004, when Lightner was a French and Latin teacher at Brunswick High.

She said that, like Bonesteel — whose relevant curriculum focuses more on business and globalization — her students are able to apply their classroom education while abroad.

"The benefit for the high school students that went was that my French students could use the language and visit the places they studied about, and my Latin students saw the ancient culture of Rome and Pompeii," Lightner explained.

Despite the teachers' individual subject areas, any students are allowed to attend the trips, and sometimes even younger siblings, parents, or friends from other schools have gone along.

The trip's attendees will begin meeting with Bonesteel this fall, to discuss various aspects of the cultures they will explore, giving them the opportunity to learn and grow before they even leave the ground.

Students fund the trips themselves, which is why the 2009 trip was announced more than a year ahead of time. Students don't hold fundraisers, instead most students pay for the majority of the $2,000 trip by using money saved working summer jobs and at part-time jobs this school year, Bonesteel said.

The tour is coordinated by Education First Tours; students will be led by a professional guide through various locales, including Paris, France; Lucerne, Switzerland; and Munich, Germany.

Despite what many adults might expect, Bonesteel and Lightner both agree that travelling with high schoolers is a fun experience.

"It's really neat to see their reactions to things and just their amazement at things they had only seen in a book or on video and there they are seeing it for the first time for themselves," Lightner said.

And, she says the delights of Europe are still breathtaking, even with a cadre of high schoolers and a tour guide in tow.

"In Paris, we got to go up the Eiffel Tower at dusk. It was daylight when we went up, and the lights came up while we were up there, and we took a boat ride down the Seine," she recalled from the 2004 trip. "That's one of my favorite things in Paris."