Travel Curriculum
Clear Spring School’s Travel Curriculum brings classroom studies to life throughout the state and the nation. Following academic themes, students develop a stronger connection to the subject and hone valuable life skills, such as budgeting, planning, interpersonal communication and group decision-making.
The duration and distance of these trips are generally determined by the students’ grade level, with older students traveling further and for longer periods of time. Travel School themes and destinations grow out of classroom studies and student interests. For example, in 2005-2006, the 9th and 10th grade students studying Lewis and Clark’s journey to the Pacific decided to “follow that trek as far as our money will take us.”
Travel Curriculum brings to life subjects as diverse as the ivory-billed woodpecker, Arkansas crystals and Toltec mounds, the history of the civil rights movement, the architecture and literature of the Deep South, United States civics, global awareness, and Native American cultures of the Southwest.
Destinations have included Louisiana swamps, the Heifer International Global Village in Little Rock, historic New Orleans’ neighborhoods (pre and post hurricane Katrina), pueblos in New Mexico, Toltec Mounds State Park, the Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, the battlefield of Vicksburg, Mississippi, and Washington D.C.
All trips involve preparatory studies, travel journaling and discussions, and post-travel summaries or presentations.