Parents> Homework • Trips • Events
Parents: Trips
Testimonials from Parents of SSIS Students who have participated in Experiential Education
I just wanted to let all of you know how impressed we are with the changed young man we picked up from the ferry last night.To be honest I was concerned how Dylan would react to the trip as he has always been one to balk at physical challenge and would much rather stay in a hotel than camp!! However, sitting up last night until midnight hearing him tell of how challenging both physically and emotionally the experience was,yet with a smile on his face and a spark in his eye,which translate into pride in himself for meeting the challenge head on and coming out the other side with a greater sense of who he is and what he's capable of, as a parent, that is priceless and I now see the true value of experential education. You guys certainly seem to understand how much more can be learnt about self discovery outside of the classroom and you are to be commended for it.I would like to thank Derek and Heather for guiding them so skillfully and allowing them to experince it the way teenagers need to,complaining all the way and laughing all the way. You can be assured I will tell anyone who will listen what a fantastic,life changing trip this was for Dylan.Thank-you all who made it possible, Kirsten Nelson-Wilkinson.
Ongoing SSIS “Dispatches from the field” excerpts from the trips will highlight cultural experiences, journals and tales from afar…
This year, Spring Street International School’s Experiential Education Program has three groups of High School students at various points around the globe.
Spain – Trek to Santiago de Compostela, Galicia
One group is in Spain, led by SSIS Spanish and English teachers, Adam and Angie Erickson. Students will be trekking throughout Spain and participating in a Spanish language immersion and cultural studies program. The students from SSIS are: Kaj Benson, Lucas Peralta, Ashleigh Barnes, Zach Milkis, Sonja Anderson, Evan Anderson, Chelsea DeCouteau, Katie Johnson, Gabe Colburn and Ingrid Carlson.
The Camino de Santiago is a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, Galicia, in northwestern Spain that has been followed since the 10th century. There is no official starting point for the pilgrimage, as religious pilgrims from all over Europe would simply depart from wherever they happened to live (Germany, England, Italy, France etc.). Goethe once stated that “Europe was built on the road to Santiago.” It was here that the citizens of so many nations first shared ideas, technology and language as they walked to the shrine of the Apostle Santiago (James). Modern pilgrims walk the camino for many purposes aside from the traditionally religious intent: athletic, spiritual and cultural. One of the best things about hiking on the Camino is the chance to experience authentic rural Spanish life in a way that a tourist never could.
Our students will come to understand what it means to be an ambassador for their country, their state and their school, while practicing their Spanish and learning about Spain. They will gain an especially intimate view of Spanish culture as they spend 8 days living with local families and attending a local high school in the town of Astorga, Leon. This 500-mile trek across northern Spain will not only provide our students with a deep understanding of the country, but, as they overcome the physical and spiritual challenges along the way, they will also come to better know themselves.
Asia Trip to Thailand and India
The Asia group, led by SSIS co-founders Ted and Peg Hope, has landed in Bangkok, Thailand, and will be making their way through Thailand and India . The SSIS student group is: Christian Carter, Bryce Fintel, Felipe Carbonell III, Amelia Carver, Chloe Choi, Peter Duggins, Laura Kriete-Bain, Joshua Lehr, Grant Schwinge and Kai Wilson.
The Asia trip for SSIS is coordinated with the Institute for Village Studies. The program offers students an in-depth, cross-cultural educational experience among village people in Asia. It provides a structured and intellectually demanding schedule of cultural study, field study, interaction and exploration. The program seeks to enhance empathy across cultures and celebrate diversity. In particular, the program helps students begin to feel what it means to be Thai or Indian. The chief influence on learning in this program will come from being a participant in daily village life.
The experience -- the immersion in village life -- becomes the main teacher. The Asia program is physically, spiritually, and emotionally strenuous and often places intellectual and physical demands on students that can create a remarkable, transformational experience. The nature of the challenge is different, so too are the rewards. The program has a quality staff of experienced trip leaders, faculty, and administrators.
American Southwest Ecological/ Cultural Studies
The third group, led by SSIS Middle School teacher Sharon Massey, will travel to the American Southwest. The SSIS student group is: Jonathan Balise, Alex Oettinger, Joanna Leff, Rachel Yang, Dong Hyun Nam, InSeok Hwang and Forrest Allison.
The group will travel south by van to Red Rock Canyon country in N. Arizona and S. Utah. Cultural and environmental studies will include studying the Anasazi culture, visiting ruins and backpacking to remote areas as well as working with a local group on condor studies and reintroduction programs. The group will visit the Grand Canyon and hike the S. Rim.
The trip includes a four-day service project with staff of Grand Canyon National Park, helping remove invasive plants throughout the Colorado River corridor.
The group will travel home through Utah, exploring National Parks and day hiking to exciting locales.
Spring Street International School
Ongoing SSIS “Dispatches from the field” from Spain
Hello everyone!
We just crossed into Galicia two days ago, after a brutal day of hiking. In total, we hiked a total of thirty-two kilometers, which normally wouldn’t have been that bad, but seeing as we were on the steepest part of the Camino it was rather difficult for everyone. The landscape was incredible, being so high in the rolling hills. We stopped in the small towns tucked into the sides of the mountains to fill up our water bottles often, quite exhausted towards the end of the day.
Home stays went extremely well, and everyone connected with their families. Lucas, Sonja and I (Katie) had to take a bus to and from Astorga every day for school.
It was wonderful to sleep in a real bed, eat nice meals, and just stay stationary for eight days. We were all sad to leave, and many of the kids wished we could have stayed longer, but it felt good to be walking again afterwards.
The first day back on the camino actually wasn’t too terrible. Everyone did fine, but a combination of the pouring rain and staying with our families in Astorga gave a few of us colds. We’ve been eating a lot of oranges and drinking a lot of water ever since.
Currently, we are staying in a city called Sarria. Today was a short day of 18 kilometers, and so we’re all well rested and getting better every day. We’re all very excited to enter Santiago on Saturday. The trip has gone by so fast!
Love,
Katie and the Spain Group – Grades 10-11 SSIS
Hi everyone,
We are 65 kilometers from Santiago--we’re close enough now that you don’t know if you should speed up or slow down. We’ve had cold, crisp, windy weather the past couple of days--great for walking. The countryside here really is amazing--it is so green and there are wild daffodils and heather blooming all over. The fields are all bordered by ancient dry stack stone walls and hedgerows and there is a new pueblo with its stone church and cottages just over each hill.
The linguistic aspect of the trip has been a lot of fun and has really given us a sense for how the romance languages have evolved from Latin. In our 4 weeks of walking we have gone from Basque to Castilian to Gallego, not to mention the dialects and accents that seem to change every 50 kilometers. In these rural pueblos the Castilian has a thick gallego accent and has some strange borrowed sentence structures. It really is interesting to see the kids practicing their Spanish here in Galicia with Gallegos who also use Spanish as their second language.
You should see us fly over the kilometers now! There are lots of pilgrims on the Camino with us at this point (about 40 in our albergue last night), but most have started in the last 50 or 100 kilometers. Our group, with almost 600 kilometers behind us, can chug up the most intimidating slopes without so much as pausing. We do have a certain vagabond appearance (and probably aroma) that can only come with this much time on the trail. You should see Lucas--with his pants rolled up to his knees, his walking staff and his numerous acquisitions pinned to his pack; he looks like he has been doing this all his life.
Hope everyone is well. We’ll see you soon!
Adam Erickson
Spanish Teacher - SSIS
News from Spain - February 27, 2008
Hello everyone!
It was a rainy, mucky day when we walked into Astorga last Tuesday--the usual singing and laughing was replaced by silence as the kids worried about beginning their homestays. We had hoped to be able to stop somewhere so that everyone could change before arriving at the school, but it didn´t work out and so, to the students utter mortification, we showed up at the front door like 12 drowned rats just as school was letting out. We sent them home with their host siblings, who had been eagerly awaiting our arrival. The next morning we met with the kids to check in. Anticipating horror stories, we all giggled for a half an hour over their funny anecdotes: Chelsea claims that as soon as she walked into the door, her host mom, without saying a word, took all of her clothing and pointed to the shower!
Now, we are more than half way through the homestays and the kids have been living daily Spanish life: eating Spanish cuisine, keeping a Spanish schedule (very different from our own), speaking Spanish and even wearing their host siblings´ Spanish clothes (we didn´t recognize Lucas when he showed up to school on the first morning! The next day, Ashleigh and Katie showed up dressed in their host sibling´s clothing).
Since we have only a week for homestays, we have tried to avoid structuring too many group activites (after 3 weeks of eating, sleeping, and walking together, you can imagine that we all needed a break from each other), but it has been great for the group to meet each school day for a half an hour to share stories about their host families. We don´t want to spoil the stories that the kids are looking forward to sharing with you themselves, but we will say that it has been a very culturally awakening experience complete with a whole, cured ham leg reposing on the dining room table of Sonja´s host family, a 3 am curfew as the school party didn´t even begin until 11 pm (we saw Zach and Ingrid the next morning--it was sunny so we dragged them to the pharmacy with us so we could slather them in sunscreen and pepper them with questions about the night´s festivities), and Evan´s milking of 50 sheep. All the Spanish girls adore Gabe due to his height and golden locks--he pretends to detest the attention. We had dinner with Kaj´s host family Friday night, and despite Kaj having caught a head cold, we all enjoyed a fabulous Spanish tortilla, a platter of local embutidos (cuts of cured meat) and cheese, a salad, and arroz con leche (rice pudding). All in all, our students are all being well fed and getting some rest and deep cleaning before we hit the trail again on Wednesday.
As we get ready to begin the second half of the camino this week, we have been talking about what a neat experience it has been to see each of the students grow as individuals. Obviously, they have gotten much stronger physically and we have gradually increased the number of kilometers that we walk each day, but they have also shown us an impressive, increased level of responsibility. Life on the camino is quickly reduced to its most basic elements as you struggle to get clothes washed (almost always by hand) for the next day, make and eat simple meals, and get enough sleep. The best part of the trip has been that, despite living day after day in this exausting survival mode, the students have all learned to put the group´s needs before their own. They are constantly rolling with the punches: from volunteering to split up the contents of a struggling companion´s pack between them to happily agreeing to walk 5 more kilometers at the end of an already exhausting day because the albergue we had hoped to stay in turned out to be closed. Our travellers have matured considerably over such a short time and we´re excited for the next two weeks.
We hope that all is well with each of you. In case you don´t already have the link to Gabe´s photo page I will include it here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/gccolburn
Un fuerte abrazo a todos,
Adam and Angie
News from Asia - February 27, 2008
Hello and tashi delek!
We arrived in Gangtok today, after a couple of wonderful days in Bodh Gaya
(more about that later), and an unexpected day in Siligiri, waiting out a
"bundh" which is the word for various kinds of strikes. When they happen,
EVERYTHING shuts down, including transportation options. This one was
started a while ago in Darjeeling, and has spread to nearby districts,
including much of Bengal. I gather some areas are lobbying for independent
nation status, something they are not likely to get from Mother India. So
I hope they find ways to resolve their issues - and am meanwhile glad that
the bundh was lifted today, so that we could get up here.
And I do mean UP here. It is SO good to be up in the mountains, breathing
clean air, putting on our warm clothes, looking at Mt. Kanchenchunga out
our hotel windows (third highest mountain in the world, amazing), in the
company of Tibetans and their like... Out of the plains of India, the
chaos and confusion, contradictions and the Indians who can as Ted says,
"friendly you to death." It is so much easier for us Americans to relate
to these mountain peoples - their values on self-reliance, independent
initiative, do-it-yourself-ness, are so much more familiar. Great
helpfulness, kindness, generosity -- not that these qualities are not
present in Indians; it's just that they way they manifest here (and I'm
sure, in Bhutan) is so more easily understood, and digested.... The kids
are thrilled to be able to move about more freely - girls don't need male
escorts for example - this is a very safe, and peaceful place.
Tomorrow we visit an orphanage for girls, and will interact, teach
English, etc. A project that our friend-of-a-friend travel agent is
involved with - himself an orphan, refugee from Tibet adopted by an
English couple and educated in India and abroad.
Bless you all for all you have done to make this grand adventure possible
- I know our students are gaining and growing tremendously.
Peace,
Peg
