The 2010 Buxton All-School Trip: Discovering Nicaragua
The annual All-School Trip is a high point of the year. It is experiential education at its best and most intense. Most years, we travel to a North American city that is a one- or two-day bus trip away, places like Chicago, Atlanta, Philadelphia, and Washington, DC. We try to go on an international trip about once every four years. On those trips, we have traveled to Toronto and Montreal, to Puerto Rico and Mexico City. We were even able to go to Havana, Cuba, in 2000. We felt that it was time for another international trip this year, and last spring several faculty members starting toying with the idea of a South American trip. Peter Smith was in touch with the chaplain at Williams College, who frequently takes Williams students to Nicaragua for their January term. Through him, Peter was in touch with an American woman who has lived and worked in Nicaragua for 20 years. The contact Pete had with her was promising and, this past summer, he went to Nicaragua on a fact-finding mission along with fellow faculty members Carmen Welton and Will Miller.
What they found was that Nicaragua was a very viable place for us to visit. We will be able to stay in a religious retreat center just outside of Managua, and we will be incorporating visits to smaller Nicaraguan cities. There are lots of opportunities for students to do community service (something that has become increasingly important on all-school trips in recent years), and there is so much for them to learn about the U.S. and its relationship to its southern neighbors.
So, we’re going! And we will be spending much of the winter term preparing for this once-in-a-lifetime event. We will be hosting lectures, reading pertinent materials in classes, and brushing up on our Spanish. The students are thrilled and the parents are being incredibly supportive. What an opportunity!