Blogs on Travel

Keynote speeches at educational conferences these days often identify that change is underfoot in education and that we must embrace different learning models. Most don't say how to set these changes in motion. So I got my hopes up when Carla Rinaldi was announced as the keynote speaker at the Winter Institute in Reggio Emilia, Italy this past February.

I'm the proud daughter of a lifelong public school teacher, and one of the things my mom loved best about being an educator was the opportunity to travel in the spring and summer. She brought artifacts, photographs, language, and lessons from every place she traveled back into her classroom, and her students were richer for it. Now retired, my mom made a goal of visiting every continent, and she goes to schools in nearly every country she visits, enchanting the children there with bubble bottles, pencils, and her trademark stuffed-animal backpack purses.

So I know that teachers are natural adventurers. I'm sure you don't need convincing to see that whether you have the resources to travel internationally or just take a short local trip, traveling can be enriching both personally and professionally for educators. Just watch the videos in this week's playlist for some ideas!

Editor's Note: Today's guest blogger is Don Doehla, French teacher and instructional coach at Vintage High School in Napa, California. Don recently stepped up to become the new facilitator of our World Languages group. He's got some great ideas for teaching world languages, including the use of project-based learning. He shares a few of these tips today. We hope you'll join him in the World Languages group as well.

The world may be small and flat, but it is also multilingual, multicultural, and more and more, it is an interconnected world. Consequently, cross cultural communicative competencies are increasingly important for mutual understanding and cooperation - how is that for some alliteration?! Our students' need to be able to communicate with their neighbors, here and abroad, is increasing with every moment which passes! The borders separating our countries are diminishing in importance as the global culture emerges. The definition of who my neighbor is has changed as well. No longer are we isolated from what is happening across the globe. Recent events demonstrate this quite well! Examples abound for everyone on the planet. We must be able to communicate well and proficiently across the kilometers which separate us.

One of my favorite books in high school was John Steinbeck's Travels With Charley, his account of his road trip around the U. S., late in his career, accompanied only by his French poodle Charley. Not having traveled much as a boy beyond my home state of Illinois, into Wisconsin and Indiana, I was mesmerized by his stories of the vastness and diversity of our country.