Teacher Travel Tours

Outreach collaborates with educators and administrators from local communities to plan opportunities for hands-on learning about Latin America and the Caribbean in the countries about which educators teach or want to learn more. To collaborate with Outreach and plan an educational travel tour for your school or district, contact LeAnne Disla at leanne.disla@duke.edu.

Currently, Outreach is collaborating with Alexander County Schools to conduct a teacher travel tour to Guanajuato, Mexico during the summer of 2009. Instead of reading or writing about Mexico, teachers will see it, smell it, taste it, and live it during their weeklong program. Teachers will participate in homestays with families in Guanajuato, visit with schools and students from the region, and complete assignments to help them develop curriculum they can use in their own classrooms upon their return. In order to prepare for the trip, Outreach is conducting a series of preliminary workshops called "Building Bridges." These workshops aim to introduce Alexander County teachers and administrators to some aspects of Mexican culture and politics they might have questions about before their trip. In March, for example, a workshop featured a panel of Mexican immigrant students and parents who are currently living in North Carolina.

Teacher travel tours can encompass many experiences and ideas. They could be inspired by a current issue about which teachers want to learn more, such as immigration in North Carolina, or by a Latin American/Caribbean book being read in a school or classroom.