Rivers Travel Programs: Creating Confidence and Cultural Fluency

While each travel program includes a bit of sightseeing, the goals are education and cultural exchange, with students immersed in the experiences of day-to-day life in a foreign country. And Andrea Villagran, who teaches Spanish and took over leadership of the travel programs in July, hopes to make them even more substantive and educational.

Informational meetings on two upcoming travel programs—a March break cultural and service trip to Kenya and the summer session in Spain—will be held over the next couple of weeks. Information sessions for the Kenya trip are scheduled for Tuesday, October 29, or Wednesday, November 6, from 6:00-7:00 p.m. in the Campus Center, Room 125. There will be a family information session for the summer session in Spain on Thursday, November 7, from 6:00 to 6:45 p.m. in the Campus Center, Room 128.

This past year, Rivers travel experiences took students to Spain, France, Greece and Italy, San Francisco, and China. Students who participated in the programs gave a presentation about their experiences at an all-school meeting on Monday. George Reinhardt ’20, who traveled to China, probably spoke for the entire cohort when he said the journey was “seriously memorable, and we all had a fantastic time.”

Faculty members involved in the programs emphasize the distinction between Rivers’s programs and more typical teen travel. “We try hard not to use the word ‘trip,’ ” says Spanish teacher Melinda Ryan. “‘Trip’ implies that you get together and go to a hotel and see sights. Cádiz is actually an academic program, a course that people apply for. They get credit. [The program is part of the interdisciplinary studies course ‘Cádiz: At the Intersection of History and Contemporary Spain.’] We’ve been running it for more almost two decades. It’s a lot of fun, but it’s also a serious academic program.”

Cádiz, she explains, is the oldest city in Western Europe. “Everywhere you go, there’s living history,” says Ryan, “if you’re looking for it.” The program, she adds, is designed to do just that, putting Cádiz in both ancient and modern contexts. As the southernmost point in Spain, it serves an entryway to Europe for immigrants, and the academic programming includes lectures and lessons on issues around immigration. This summer, says Ryan, a guest lecturer from an NGO spoke to the students, providing a boots-on-the-ground perspective; recent immigrants also visited the class, to share their stories.

The students stay with Spanish families who live in the old part of the city. The homes are mostly modest apartments in urban neighborhoods, exposing students to an entirely different way of life. “What happens at the end of two weeks’ complete immersion in language and culture is pretty impressive,” Ryan reports. It’s not just that their language skills have improved: “There’s a marked improvement in their fearlessness, their willingness to take risks, to stand up and become intrepid learners.”

A similar transformation takes place with the students who travel to France. “Their confidence improves,” reports Goldsmith. The France program offers a different sort of immersion: French students from the city of Aix-en-Provence visit Rivers in the spring, staying with host families, and then the host students spend two weeks over the summer living with their exchange partners. It’s an extended exposure to a different way of life, and students come away with an array of impressions about life as it’s actually lived by their French counterparts.

“They make do with less,” said Michael Idzal ’21, who participated in the program this year. The family apartment was small, and young people relied on public transportation. “That’s something I never do,” he noted, but learning to navigate the bus routes on his own provided a sense of accomplishment.

Elizabeth Butter ’21 enjoyed the food served by her host family, as well as the unfamiliar routine of requisite daily family meals. “My family tries to sit down for meals together, but for them, it’s really an important thing,” she says. Most notably, she formed a close relationship with her host student and expects to remain connected with her. “It’s cool that I have a friend in a foreign country,” she says. “Not everyone can say they have that.”