Following the Equator | EF's Educational Travel Blog

Group Leader Spotlight: Phil Leswing

First-time group leader, Phil Leswing, teaches psychology at Greenfield-Central High School in Greenfield, Indiana. Phil (pictured at left with his wife and son) began organizing his 2011 educational tour to Spain, France and Italy this past October, anticipating he would travel with a small group. Two hundred people showed up at his first meeting, and he now has a group of almost 70 travelers. Here, he shares his story.

What inspired you to take an EF tour?

The joy and inspiration I get from traveling was the first factor which motivated me to travel with EF. When traveling with a group I get as much joy and inspiration from seeing other people excited as I do from my own experience. There is a powerful force generated by groups of people traveling together. I chose EF because of two things that seem like they can’t coexist, but they do. The professional side of EF is outstanding. I also appreciate the personal side of the company. The open and constant communication has made it easy as a first time group leader to feel like I’ve been doing this for years.


How do you use your blog to promote your tour? Do you use any other types of social media (ex. Facebook, Twitter) to promote your tour?

I use the blog for trip and meeting updates right now. As we get closer, I’ll be adding information about the destinations and our trip details. My Twitter just announces the trip and connects to the blog, so it is not really in use yet, but I can see us using it in the future.


As a first time group leader, you've been incredibly successful at recruiting students for your tour. What’s your secret to success? How do you encourage students to sign up for your tour? 

The first thing that made recruiting students successful was finding a core of social students who were very interested in going on a trip. I then involved them in the decision making process of where we would go on our trip. We set up our first recruitment meeting in October, and I started going to classes and talking up the trip. The posters and itineraries that EF provides were hung up and distributed before our meeting, so even more people were getting exited. We had over 200 people show up for our initial recruitment meeting. I was amazed by the turnout. I had gotten some gelato to share with the group. I had Flikr slideshows going of the destinations we would be traveling to, and I had EF YouTube videos playing. One of the potential chaperones had traveled with EF in the past so he spoke with the group about the professionalism and personal connection that EF provides. We had a best price deadline of October 31st, and a first night sign up raffle for 50 dollars off the trip.

Group Leader Spotlight: Jen Petrin

After changing careers from the corporate world, Jen Petrin has been teaching art and art history for eight years at Old Mill High School in Millersville, Maryland. She teaches Foundations of Art, IB Art 11 and AP Art History to students in grades nine to 12. Jen has traveled on five EF tours and will travel on Bell' Italia next month and the Kenya Safari convention this summer. Here, she shares her EF experiences.



What inspired you to take an EF tour?

I was inspired to take an EF tour because I wanted to show my art history students Greek, Roman, Renaissance and Baroque landmarks in person. I wanted them to feel how beautiful and awe inspiring art is in person; I hoped they’d catch the bug.



You recently presented at Paris O. What advice do you have for new group leaders?
I encourage new group leaders to plan ahead and think of every detail before you go. Start recruiting for a tour 18 months out. Attend an orientation or talk to an experienced group leader via email. Pack half or what you think you’ll need!
 


How do you encourage students to sign up for your tour?
Dealing with recruitment is a challenge in my district, but good news has a way of traveling. I plant a seed with the right students and then they come to me.



Do you use any types of social media (ex. Facebook, Twitter) to promote your tour?

I promote on Facebook, and I have the kids that are signed up promote to their friends to widen the communication beyond my own students. Good kids tend to be friends with students who value the same experiences.



Do you do any fundraising for your tour? If so, what kind of fundraisers have you held?

I have done every type of fundraiser in the past but this has become more complicated in recent years. Chipin.com is a great way for relatives and family friends to help the kids save money. I usually plan a trip more than 18 months out, so I encourage all of my students to utilize EF’s monthly payment plan. Since I teach high school most students get a summer job to help pay for the trip as well.



Group Leader Spotlight: Chris Seymore

After practicing law in Philadelphia for three years, Chris Seymore decided to change careers and become a teacher. Eight years later he says, “Without question I made the right decision. I look forward to coming to work every day.  I’m a million times happier as a teacher than I ever was as a lawyer.” Today, Seymore teaches World Cultures/Global Studies and Constitutional Law at Ridley High School, outside of Philadelphia. Since 2006, he has traveled on eight EF tours, and in 2009, he visited 14 countries. Here he tells us about his travel experiences.

What inspired you to begin traveling abroad with students?
My only international travel prior to 2006 was when I visited Toronto during my sophomore year in high school. As a world cultures teacher, I decided it was time to experience other cultures with my students  and do some teaching and learning outside the traditional classroom environment. Not in my wildest dreams did I imagine what the next three years would bring! In the last three years, I have been to Europe 11 times (eight tours, one Paris Orientation, one Rome Orientation and one personal visit to Italy on my own). I also visited Jordan and Egypt in 2009 as part of an EF Teacher Convention Tour. In 2010, I will travel on three EF tours: Discover Costa Rica, European Horizons and a customized tour of Paris, Switzerland, Italy, Greece and the Greek Islands. The impact on me has been tremendous, and the experiences we have had through EF have been life-changing for so many of my students.

Our 10 Best of 2009

Thank you to everyone for reading, sharing and supporting Following the Equator in 2009. We sure enjoyed posting great stories, facts, tips and profiles about educational travel and the group leaders who make it possible.

We're already planning some exciting new things for 2010. Most of all, though, we want to hear from you. What do you want to read and see on this blog—more interviews with teachers, more amazing travel photos, more fundraising and recruiting ideas, more tidbits about the things to see and do on tour? Let us know at equator@ef.com.

As we look ahead to an exciting year of travel in 2010, we thought we'd take a quick look back at a successful 2009 and our 10 favorite blog posts of the year. Feel free to post your own comments below.

Group Leader Spotlight: Maria and Corey Lumpkin

Maria Lumpkin is the Director of Student Life and Engagement at Spelman College. Her husband, Corey, is the Program Manager of the Public Health Sciences Institute at Morehouse College. Together, they take students all over the world with EF College Study Tours.

Spelman and Morehouse colleges are part of the largest consortium of historically black institutions of higher learning in the world. Corey has taught courses in public health and health-care administration at the collegiate level. Maria has lectured in leadership and urban education administration.

On their next educational adventure, Maria and Corey (pictured above on their last EF tour to Egypt) are traveling with students to Japan. In the Group Leader Spotlight, Maria talks about providing travel opportunities to their students, how to recruit travelers and her ideal convention destination.

Group Leader Spotlight: Carolyn Sanders

With 15 EF tours and nine convention tours under her belt, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Carolyn Sanders, a physical education teacher at Bill Reed Middle School in Loveland, Colorado, has visited 40 countries with EF.

Besides traveling to every continent (yes, she used her EF Global Points to take a trip to Antarctica!), she’s also met some of her closest friends through EF.

In the Group Leader Spotlight, Carolyn recaps some of her favorite travel adventures and talks about how she and some other EF Group Leaders once created their own EF convention to Thunder Bay, Canada.

Group Leader Spotlight: Linda Piccolo

From attending a Wiccan wedding at Stonehenge to bribing a housekeeper to let her see the suite where Agatha Christie wrote her novels, Linda Piccolo has had her fair share of adventures while traveling abroad with her students on EF tours.

The high school English and theater teacher from Montana has even been inspired by her travels to write a play, which was published and performed by one of her drama classes last year.

In this installment of the Group Leader Spotlight, Linda shares some of her experiences, describes how important travel is for students and hints at her next travel-inspired play.

Group Leader Spotlight: Chad Brannon

Traveling has always been an integral part of Chad Brannon's life. Now, as a middle-school science teacher in Alabama, Chad is making travel an important part of his students' lives, too.

And he has the stories to prove it.

Ask him about the effect that educational travel has on his students, and he'll tell you a story about the boy who once had no direction but now credits his tour for opening his eyes, or the boy who traveled to Costa Rica and now wants to major in Spanish education and help underprivileged kids speak English, or the girl who came out of her shell after braving the zip line through the Costa Rican rainforest.

Chad—pictured above on the right with his co-group leader, John DiPlacido—is preparing to lead his fourth tour with EF, taking his students back to Costa Rica in June. He took some time out of his busy spring break to share some of his favorite stories with us:

Group Leader Spotlight: Ian Lowe

Ian Lowe, a teacher and former football coach at Lethbridge Collegiate Institute in Alberta, Canada, first began traveling with students on the football team and in the high school band. After seeing the value these experiences provided to the program and his students, he promoted trips to Europe, and his travel program took off from there.

Now, Ian travels with a large group of students every year. He even has parents calling him, trying to get a head start on enrolling their children.

Ian (above right) shares his thoughts with us on the importance of student travel, advice for new group leaders and how traveling with students is like coaching a team.

Group Leader Spotlight: Dan Ware

It can happen at any point in life, but once you’ve been bitten by the travel bug, it’s hard to sit still. And with four trips on the horizon, Dan Ware—a history and geography teacher at Rock Bridge High School in Columbia, Missouri—is doing anything but that.

Whether he’s traveling on an educational tour to Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam or exploring Austria, Germany and Switzerland, Dan understands the importance of the lessons that take place outside of the classroom. To integrate his tours into his classroom lessons, he takes advantage of the credit option EF offers and also makes sure to teach his students some of the life skills they’ll need for traveling abroad at his pre-tour meetings.

Over the years, Dan (pictured above on a school visit in Kenya) has learned a few tricks for holding a successful recruitment, too. He shares some of his secrets:

Group Leader Spotlight: Susan Pennington

"The joy I have found in watching students learn and grow has made traveling with students one of the best decisions I’ve made in my teaching career," says EF Group Leader Susan Pennington, an English and public speaking teacher at Nerinx Hall High School in St. Louis, Missouri.

Read on to learn why Susan keeps traveling abroad and for some tips on planning an EF tour of your own.

What inspired you to begin traveling abroad with students?
When I teach poetry, fiction and creative writing, I use the images and experiences that permeate my brain to help me to understand literature and life. For me, many of these powerful images and experiences are from trips I have taken to Europe. About six years ago, I realized that if my students had similar experiences, they might make better connections between the things they study and the ways of the world, past and present.  When all this collided in my head, I decided I needed to take students to Europe to give them their own special images and experiences.

Our 10 Best of 2008

This is the 320th post of 2008 at Following the Equator, and we decided to commemorate our blog's first full calendar year with a top-10 list of favorite posts.

We had a lot of stories, videos, photos, interviews, tips and perspectives about educational travel. We launched some regular weekly features, including our Tip of the Week and Photo of the Week. We debuted Life on Tour, introduced EF on YouTube and EF on Facebook and promoted the EF Tours group on Flickr (above). And, along the way, we encountered a lot of inspiring travelers.

Following the Equator also was nominated for a Blogger's Choice Award and finished fifth out of 1,177 blogs for Best Travel Blog. Thank you to everyone who supported our blog in 2008 by voting, reading, sharing, commenting and subscribing. We're looking forward to an even more successful 2009.