Snapshots from a Global Student Travel Program
Michael McLaughlin is Head of Middle School at Austin Prep in Reading, Massachusetts.
By Michael C. McLaughlin
A footrace in the Stadium at Olympus ignited Serry’s passion for the classical world. Audrey was excited to share about the delicious croissants she discovered in Quebec’s Old Quarter.
Andrew found the confidence to give surfing a try in the Tasman Sea and returned from Australia with an epic memory. Nora navigated her way across the marshy meadows of Runnymeade to capture a photo: she walked where history happened.
These stories are just the beginning of many tales from the trails. Each story is a window into how travel has transformed my students.
Exploration through travel is an enriching experience that expands horizons. Since 2008, I’ve been privileged to lead students to destinations across four continents and have stamped 21 nations in my passport. I’ve watched students navigate bustling markets on a linguistic exercise in Peru, explore castles and the Crown through role play in the United Kingdom, and conquer their fears while engaging in adrenaline-pumping activities in Australia.
These tales from the trails remind me of the value of student group travel. These opportunities inspire students’ capacity to take risks, foster their global citizenship, and create lasting memories.
Earlier this year, I had the opportunity to develop a workshop about student travel that I presented at the Association for Middle Level Education annual conference in Nashville. Whether your school community is exploring travel for the first time or evaluating next year’s slate of itineraries, I invite you to consider five lessons learned from my own adventures.
Mission Matters
The core of any program must be rooted in a school’s values. Mission-driven decision making provides school leaders with a foundation, a framework, and a path to the future. Operating through the lens of mission creates consistency across initiatives and ensures that programs are closely aligned with and advance a school’s value proposition.
At Austin Preparatory School our mission is to inspire hearts to unite, minds to inquire, and hands to serve. The prongs of the mission statement are rooted in the three values of the Augustinian order – veritas (truth), unitas (unity), and caritas (charity). As an instructional leader, I make all my decisions through the prism of that mission statement – including choices about where and how we travel and the activities students will participate in on the road.
Palace of Westminster
Student travel should be a deliberate extension of a school’s mission. For example, in our service trip to the Sacred Valley in Peru, students used their emergent skills in Spanish to navigate a market and complete a scavenger hunt. At the end of the activity, students donated the items that they purchased to a food pantry.
As I evaluate itineraries, I consider how the trip will empower students to connect to our mission through their experience: How can students utilize existing knowledge or skills and do so in a hands-on, immersive way? How might students work together as they explore? How might students engage with the global community? How might an experience build empathy or empower students to contribute to a cause?
Let your school’s mission be the plate on which all your programming rests.
Plan in Advance
Centralizing travel programs permits schools to be more strategic and intentional about programmatic offerings. Variety is key. At Austin Prep, we offer a diversity of options – trips oriented towards service, language immersion, or cultural exploration – and to different locations, at different times of the year, and at different price points. It is important to balance variety with sustainability. Grow your program slowly and assess the market conditions within your school community.
At Austin Prep, we begin planning a trip about two years in advance. We identify destinations and research vendors for the following academic year in the fall. Decisions are made over winter break. We announce all of the next year’s trips in the spring. This timeline allows travelers and their families to evaluate all of their options and to budget financial resources. After informational meetings and registration, regular pre-trip gatherings prepare students for their time abroad.
In promoting your school’s menu of travel offerings, I recommend a multi-channel approach. In addition to the website, we send out targeted emails to students whose involvement in a given program may make them a good fit for a trip, visit classrooms, and host webinars and meetings for families. These communications are media-rich with photos and video that capture student voices and highlight the transformative potential of travel.
Training Teachers
Leading or chaperoning a student travel group is tremendous fun, but teachers must remember that it is not a vacation. The safety and well-being of students must be their top priority. Teachers might have to miss an excursion in order to accompany a student to a health clinic or rectify a missing passport.
In thinking about faculty to invite as chaperones on a trip, consider the gifts and perspectives that they will bring to the group and how they will enhance the student’s experience. In our upcoming trip to Japan, we’ve invited a teacher of Asian history to provide cultural background, our Arts chair to help students access workshops about drumming and Manga, a Robotics and Math teacher who will model inquiry and deliver curricula, and our Dining Services Manager to facilitate conversations and experiences about cuisine.
Select your teachers from among those who can think on their feet, exercise patience and flexibility, and have a passion for bringing the travel experience to life for students.
In preparing teachers for their role, schools should provide professional development and workshops to help educators. Topics might include Duty of Care, First Aid, Cultural Considerations, Communications, Financials, Group Dynamics, Curricula, Emotional Health Support, and Personal Preparation.
Bring Learning to Life
Travel is active learning at the core. Rich learning experiences don’t just happen. There is a great deal of intentional coordination behind these moments. Go beyond simply seeing the sights. Consider how hands-on experiences can activate curiosity and engage students.
One of my favorite travel memories was with my Renaissance Art History class. My students had researched masterpieces by Da Vinci, Botticelli, and others and delivered their final presentations as “docents” in front of the originals in Florence.
At Austin Prep, we organize a similar opportunity for eighth grade students during their Civics capstone trip to Washington, D.C. During our illuminated monuments walks, students become the guides for their classmates. Such opportunities are consistent with best pedagogical practices: providing students with agency and choice, creating moments for them to share their voice, and finding ways for them to apply learning in practical ways.
Just as in lesson planning, identify an age-appropriate objective for students to pursue at each site you will visit. Austin Prep middle schoolers can spend the summer in the United Kingdom through our partnership with the Independent Schools Cultural Alliance. Students explore with a purpose. They memorize and recite Shakespearean verse in Stratford. Students taste test fish and chips at Brighton Pier. They don costumes and historic personas as we walk through the kitchens of Hampton Court. On the HMS Victory, students complete a scavenger hunt that animates Britain’s’ naval heritage. Then we reflect on these experiences.
The transformation that occurs through travel is so much more than academic. Students also have the capacity to grow personally as they exercise curiosity, practice responsibility and independence, and consider other perspectives.
James Hickey, PhD, is Head of School at Austin Prep. He characterizes this type of growth as students accessing the “unwritten curriculum” – those experiences that go beyond the lessons learned from a textbook or classroom instruction. Austin Prep’s patron, Saint Augustine, wrote: “The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page.” We take pride in helping students to interact with the world beyond our Willow Street campus and explore their place within it.
Sharing the journey over social media
Tell the Tale
Sharing and celebrating should be a step in any school initiative. Too often, schools exert lots of resources and energies on planning and executing a program but don’t always take the time to appreciate the fruits of that labor.
When it comes to student travel, family and friends enjoy learning about the trip as it is happening. At Austin Prep, we accomplish this through regular emails, a blog with group photos, and an active, media-rich social media presence.
It is helpful to deputize a capable chaperone with photo-video duties and review a certain level of quality expectations beforehand so as to not let the trip go to waste from a documentation standpoint. After your plane touches down, consider hosting forums for travelers to connect with other kids about their experiences; these opportunities will inspire your next group of globetrotters.
Our choir meets the Pope
Our school choir has twice had the opportunity to meet the Pope and headlined a Christmas concert in Rome over the last decade. Back on campus, we featured their incredible experience in a host of communications to different constituent stakeholder
From video footage shared on our website to coffee table books in our offices to the concert poster and iconic photo from the Vatican framed prominently in our lobby, the tour was a story that had vitality log after we touched down in Boston – and it was the centrality of mission, intentional preparation, and careful curation of the itinerary that gave it this longevity.
Ready to Soar
The 21st Century has been marked by increasing connectivity. With advances in technology, we as educators are preparing students for a world that cannot yet be imagined – for jobs and fields that haven’t even been dreamed of yet. Curricula must be relevant for the world that students operate in today while likewise preparing them to participate in the global society of tomorrow.
Time abroad is a chance to step out of their comfort zones, build connections, and develop a global perspective. Through the travel program, students are able to be thoughtful about global issues and perspectives because they are immersed in them; they are able to engage authentically with people and places beyond their cultural affiliations or national borders; and then they build upon those experiences in their own personal development and their studies.
As you pack your bags and prepare to bring your students out in the world, remember to approach the program through the lens of mission, plan strategically, select and invest in student-centered chaperones, program with intentionality, and celebrate the tales from the trails. I hope you’ll start exploring with your students soon because you’ll find that an adventure awaits on the journey ahead!
Michael C. McLaughlin is Head of Middle School at Austin Preparatory School in Reading, Massachusetts – a Catholic, Augustinian, independent, co-ed, school for students in grades 6-12. Michael is on the Board of Directors for the New England League of Middle Schools. He has presented for AMLE, NELMS, NEASC, and the PD Collaborative.
A 2024 Finalist for the Student & Youth Travel Association’s Teacher Traveler of the Year, Michael has appeared on travel podcasts, been profiled in Teach and Travel and Group Tours Magazine, and frequently writes on group and student travel for Group Tour Media.
