Pacific Ridge Students Make a Difference through Global Travel

As a yearly part of Pacific Ridge School’s mission of academic excellence, ethical responsibility and global engagement, its students are given the unique opportunity to travel around both the country and globe for academic, service and cultural experiences.

The trips are part of the academic curriculum at Pacific Ridge School. Throughout the year, students acquire worldly knowledge and skills, engage with outside communities through the school’s service learning program, gain fluency in world politics and history, and explore literature from around the world. Led by members of the Pacific Ridge School faculty and staff, the programs strengthen students’ understanding of the year’s curriculum and take their education beyond the classroom walls. This year, 90% of Pacific Ridge School’s 485 students traveled to destinations such as Argentina, Bahamas, California’s Northern Sierras and Santa Monica mountains, China, Cuba, Ghana, Iceland, Italy, Mexico, New York City, Palestine, Puerto Rico, South Africa, Spain, Taiwan, Tanzania, Turkey, Utah and Washington, D.C.

In South Africa, students expanded the knowledge they gained in a Post-Colonial African History course and connected with a Cape Town homeless shelter they had been helping to support through Pacific Ridge’s service learning program. Students spent time in several of Cape Town’s townships, including Langa, Gugulethu, Khayalitsha, Masiphumelele and Red Hill. While in the townships, they volunteered at an orphanage and conducted an after-school fair at a GAPA (Grandmothers Against Poverty & Aids) facility. They also interviewed one of Nelson Mandela’s former prison guards at Robben Island, toured Cape Town’s business district, and learned about the area’s wildlife, environment and conservancy efforts at the Aquila Private Game Reserve.

In New York City, students involved with Pacific Ridge’s Performing Arts program attended theater productions of various kinds, met and conversed with actors and others working in the theater industry, explored the city’s diverse neighborhoods and strengthened Pacific Ridge’s relationship with two public schools: an elementary school in Washington Heights and the Collegiate Institute for Math and Science in the Bronx. Prior to leaving for New York, students designed and rehearsed lesson plans for both schools, neither of which has an arts program. Using theater games as a way to break the ice, group members made rich, personal connections with the New York students and shared their passion for the arts.

After returning from their various travel programs, Pacific Ridge students shared what they learned at a school-wide expo, where classmates and families could hear directly about their experiences. For more information about Pacific Ridge School and its global engagement curriculum, visit pacificridge.org.

–Information taken from a Pacific Ridge Press Release