Experiential Learning Through Travel

Vicki Davis: Today’s show is sponsored by EF Explore America and the STEM Tours. To show your students how STEM impacts the world up close and in action, go to efexploreamerica.com/STEM and stay tuned at the end of the show to learn more.

Vicki Davis: Today we’re talking with Angela Cannava. She’s a high school science and career and technical education teacher in Denver. She’s been doing that for 19 years. She has established the CTE Biomedical Sciences Pathway and serves as advisor for HOSA, Future Health Professionals. For the last five years, she’s been taking her students beyond the classroom walls and leading international tours, including a health sciences trip to Great Britain and a Ridge to Reef expedition in Belize. So we’re talking about how student travel transforms learning and your experiences, Angela. Why don’t you start with your first trip.

Angela Cannava: My first travel experience with students was with EF Tours, in Great Britain. The reason I decided to take kids to travel in the first place is because I had actually gone on a tour with EF with one of my friends, Brian Jenkins, the year before. And when I was on that tour with him, I saw how much students’ eyes were opened when they were traveling and how you could build different relationships with them and see them on a different level and get to know what their true interests are. That’s what sparked me to want to lead the Health Sciences in Great Britain tour with EF tours. I was very nervous leading my first trip. I was like, my gosh, I can’t believe I’m taking kids all the way overseas. But EF did a great job with helping ease my anxiety and my worry. I had chaperones with me, I had support, I had a tour director that met us right at the airport, and as soon as we got off that plane, the kids — you could just tell how excited they were because some of the kids that I took had never left Denver before. This was an absolutely amazing experience for them to actually get to be in a different country.

Vicki Davis: Wow.

Angela Cannava: So that trip was absolutely incredible. I had an amazing tour director, and one thing that EF does that’s amazing is they have all local tour directors, so they know the area really, really well. I had an outstanding chaperone team, which for any teacher that’s thinking about traveling, that’s a very important thing to consider when you’re doing your pre-planning — who your chaperone team will be. You want a nice diverse chaperone team where all the students will have a relationship with at least one of those chaperones. Just a little side note. We got to see so many cool things in both Scotland and England. The great part about the tour was the trip was aligned to the curriculum I’m teaching. One of the highlights was we went to this forensics lab and we got to do real DNA fingerprinting, look at fingerprint analysis. This was a real lab in a different country, so the kids got to see it from a different perspective too, which was so interesting. One of the students who wasn’t necessarily the most excited to be in class sometimes — I just remember him coming up to me after the whole forensics workshop and being like, my gosh, Ms. Cannava, everything you taught me is actually what they do in the real lab. This is so cool. We did everything from health science related things, anatomical museums, seeing anatomical artifacts that have been collected from years ago, a lot of the old paintings that were done of anatomy, some of the first anatomical paintings that were ever done. That hooked really nicely into the anatomy class that I teach. But beyond the learning part, we went on the London Eye, and it was like sunset, and I have this picture of these students just looking out across the skyway, all smiles. I’ve never seen such happy kids in my life. It was a really good mix of getting to see really good sites plus the learning. A key for any teacher wanting to take students on a trip is, number one, knowing that you can definitely do it. If you build strong relationships with students, they will want to travel with you. And I was so surprised by how much the students actually wanted to interact with me. I could go on for hours about it.

Vicki Davis: When you brought those kids back from Great Britain from this tour, did anything change in your classroom or your relationship with your students? Like what happened after in terms of the culture around what you teach?

Angela Cannava: A lot — I took students all the way from freshmen through senior level. It was a very diverse group of students, and a lot of those students I did have in my class the next year. I saw they would talk about connections from the trip when we were learning material in class. For example, when I was talking about those anatomical drawings that were done ages ago, when we were starting our anatomy unit looking at some of these historical pieces of anatomy, one of the kids was like, oh my gosh, we saw that! And I was like, wow, what a cool connection to make. I got so many more students in HOSA, the career and technical student organization I run, because of that trip — because they saw that traveling beyond and being a part of something that’s bigger than just your normal school day can do so much to enrich your life and your learning. We also travel through that organization too. It was very eye-opening, and we are an IB school as well, so having that international component that I can relate my lessons back to is really helpful. And like I said, building those relationships with students — having kids come in and just want to eat lunch with me and go back through the pictures from the trip, or talk about, do you remember that really gross dinner that we had? Because yes, most of the food was wonderful, but there were a couple dinners that some of the kids didn’t love. And they’re like, do you remember that? I don’t think I could ever eat that again.

Vicki Davis: A lot of that is not because the food’s not good, it’s because it’s different. And I think it’s good for kids to have different experiences in different countries.

Angela Cannava: Exactly. Is it called haggis, I think, in Scotland? Trying — a lot of the food is just so different. And I also remember the kids talking about how they felt so much better when they were in Europe because we were eating so much non-processed food. They came back changed. There were a couple of students that barely spoke a word in class who decided to sign up on that tour, and they came back — I was teaching three levels at that time, so it was the third year I had one student, and he had never said maybe ten words to me before. And after we went on that trip, he just hit it off with me, telling me all about his weekends and about his baseball games and about how he wants to travel the world now and about how I inspired him. Moments like that were just so incredible and so touching.

Vicki Davis: And you know, Angela, all this resonates with me because I’ve traveled with kids and this is exactly why we travel with kids. It changes everything about the relationship. It changes how even kids who don’t go on the trip view our subject and view the culture of our class, because we’ve made it real world. Now you took another trip — you went to Belize. So tell us what was the purpose of that trip and what did your students experience and do? What are some of the stories you have there?

Angela Cannava: Yes, so very different. EF offers a very diverse menu of trips, and I wanted to do a STEM trip that was more centered around conservation. So we decided on Belize from Ridge to Reef, and this one was super fun. I knew most of the kids that were on this tour — I’d had most of them in class before, they were mostly upperclassmen, so I had a pretty strong relationship with them already, which made it really fun. But it was a different type of student that wanted to go on this one rather than going to Europe, because it was a very different type of trip. It was so funny — we landed and I remember our tour director. He was amazing, this Belizean just full of energy, and he picks up our group and he’s like, okay, we’re going to the zoo right now! And the kids are like, wait, what? I’m still in my clothes from the plane. He’s like, no, no, we’re gonna make the most out of this experience, we’re gonna do everything we can. So we went to the zoo there, which is very different than zoos here — it’s all about saving animals and restoring their lives in natural habitats. That was the first experience and it happened within 20 minutes of us being on the bus. Then Belize was the ridge part — the mountains — and the kids got to experience so much. One of my favorite memories was we got to do this bat workshop in the middle of the night. This NGO — I can’t remember the name of it exactly — took us, and we did a bunch of science-related activities during the day, looked at some ecology and different plants and botany. But then that night we did a bat workshop and they showed us how they do studies on bats — the bats fly into these nets and they catch them and very slowly untangle them. Even though we were all so hot and sweaty and tired at this point, the kids were just in awe, getting to see this bat up close. We were like ten feet away from it and they’re explaining all of the anatomy about the bats, about how the bats are all so different from one another. That was definitely one of the highlights. Another was zip lining through the rainforest — one of the longest zip lines there. That trip was more for the adventurous kid, the kid that likes to get their hands dirty.

Vicki Davis: Yeah.

Angela Cannava: A very different type of trip, and some advice I’d give to teachers thinking of traveling is make sure kids know what they’re getting into. Belize from Ridge to Reef — exactly as it says, Ridge to Reef. Three days were in the mountains, four days were in the ocean. So the kids kept asking, when are we going to the ocean? When are we going to the ocean? And we’re like, we’ll get there, but it’s from Ridge to Reef. They thought they’d be hanging out at the beach the whole time. So really setting students up with the expectation for the trip is super important. Versus going on the Health Sciences in Great Britain — you need to be ready to walk five, six, seven miles a day and handle it without complaining. Very different types of trips. One of my other favorite memories of Belize is we got to go on a boat tour, and it was so eye-opening. I don’t teach any of those science courses such as biology or ecology or earth science, but the kids were making connections on that boat tour to their other classes, which was so cool. They were like, oh my gosh, I remember learning in Mr. Bobbler’s class that this type of tree is unique to islands — saying all these facts and connecting what they were learning in other classes as well. We went snorkeling, learned all the different species of fish, just got to be immersed within Belize. And that tour director was so life-changing for so many students, because he told his life story of being born in Belize. When we were on the bus he would always be telling stories, and the kids were like, does this guy ever be quiet? And I’m like, no, he’s telling us a story. And they just started to eat it up — stories about how people build their houses from the ground up, building it as a family, and about how different the culture is there. I remember him having the bus pull over to get some fresh fruit for us — he got a bunch of mangoes and cut them up and gave them to the kids, and the kids were like, oh my gosh, this is so fresh, I’ve never had fruit like this in my life. The tour director said, I want you to taste Belize, I want you to feel Belize, I want you to experience Belize, and then bring that learning back to your classroom. We did a beach cleanup and talked about microplastics — the kids felt like they were impacting the world, which we were. And my absolute favorite thing that came from that is one of the students who went on that trip is actually going to work at the NGO this summer where we did the bat workshop. He just told me that last week and I was like, good for you, how cool! So not just classroom connections, but connections beyond that, for life.

Vicki Davis: Really? Wow. So as you look at what’s next for you and your students, how do you go about making that choice?

Angela Cannava: I like to get student interests, so I’ll give out a survey and ask kids if they’re interested in traveling and where they’d like to go. That seems to help with our enrollment numbers. A lot of the kids really want to go to Europe, that’s what I’ve noticed. But then once we came back from Belize and the kids were hearing the stories, they were like, wait, can you do Belize again? In a couple of years, please. So what’s next? I’m actually running a trip this summer on the Mediterranean coast and the Swiss Alps with another EF tour, chaperoning that one. And then I’m doing Health Sciences in Great Britain again — not this summer, but next summer, because it was such a hit.

Vicki Davis: That is great. So Angela, is this something that somebody who doesn’t really have a lot of experience traveling with kids can do?

Angela Cannava: Yes. My biggest piece of advice would be to make sure you go with some sort of travel company, travel agent, or travel group. There are a lot of them out there. EF is our flagship for our school, so we all use EF, and we have a travel program at our school with a lot of different trips going to lots of different areas of the world. Definitely having somebody that can help with the organization and the planning — because we’re so busy as teachers, as you all know, we have no time. EF makes it so easy. They make my flyers, they make my PowerPoints, they make everything for me, and it’s just ready to go for my promotion nights. They give you deadlines, a website to help kids raise money. Having that tour director and having all the hotels and meals ready for you — making it doable for the workload. It definitely can be done. I was very nervous at first, but now I am not. Now I’m not going to stop. I love it.

Vicki Davis: That’s wonderful. So Angela Cannava, a high school science and career technical education teacher in Denver, has been doing that for 19 years, and she also works with the Future Health Professionals. Thank you for coming on the show and telling us your story of travel with kids. I just love these stories and they really fit with my experiences. I planned a lot of my trips myself — I wish I had used EF Tours now.

Angela Cannava: Absolutely. Thank you so much.

Vicki Davis: Thanks for coming on the show, Angela.

Vicki Davis (Sponsor — EF Explore America STEM Tours): If you’re a STEM teacher like me, you want your students to see how STEM impacts the real world, not just read about it. On an EF Explore America STEM tour, they might code robots with MassRobotics at MIT, explore marine ecosystems in Florida’s coral reefs, or even sit down with a former spy in Washington DC to discover how STEM thinking shows up where you least expect it. Every itinerary is designed by experts to amplify what you teach through hands-on experiences that can’t be replicated in the classroom. Visit efexploreamerica.com/STEM and see what an EF Explore America STEM tour can do for your students. Some of the greatest things I’ve ever done with my students have been tours — and they make it all easy for you. So again, check out efexploreamerica.com/STEM.