A worldly way to earn school credits

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Cristian Sanchez (from left), Claire Dobry and Kirk Fortelka in Toledo, Spain with Minooka TAPS. | submitted by Terry Dobry

Updated: October 31, 2011 3:03PM

MINOOKA — The eighth-graders in the Minooka Travel Abroad Program, or TAP, always have fun on their overseas adventures, but they also learn enough about the history, literature, language, art, culture, and food of the countries they visit that they earn high school credit along with it.

Nineteen Minooka Junior High students, a handful of parents, and five teachers — four from Minooka and one from Homer Glen — returned home this month from a two-week educational tour of Spain, Portugal, Morocco and Gibraltar.

It was the best trip of all the TAP excursions, said organizer and literature teacher Mike Curtis, although he admits to saying that about every trip.

Last year, his eighth-graders went to Ireland.

The year before, to Italy. Before that, it was Greece and then Germany.

Next year, the group plans on extending its reach to Asia for a trip to Japan. To extensively study about the countries beforehand, and then have the chance to visit them gives his students a much richer experience, Curtis said.

“It really gives kids that unique experience,” he said. “It hits home better than just reading a book or taking the trip without learning about the culture and history first. … It means more when they understand what they’re seeing before they go there.”

Minooka TAP is not affiliated with the school district, but students and teachers meet at the junior high every Wednesday after school to prepare academically for the trips.

For student Danielle Davis, the destinations felt more like a different world than different countries.

“I am very, very glad I got to go,” Danielle said. “It’s something I’ll probably treasure forever.”

Danielle didn’t mind the extra homework she had to do to prepare for the trip during the school year.

It was worth it to know what to expect and to be able to have a better feeling for the sites she saw.

“I was most looking forward to Morocco and Gibraltar,” she said. “We saw buildings made of Jurassic limestone. I liked the culture, too, seeing the ways they live. It was very, very different from our culture.”

The group began its tour in Lisbon, Portugal, drove around southern Spain, made a stop in Gibraltar, and cruised across the Mediterranean to spend a day in Morocco.

The tour took the students to the palaces of Sintra, a small bone chapel in Evora, the famed bullring in Seville, the top of the Rock of Gibraltar and through a Moorish palace in Granada.

They got to see the famous windmills across Don Quixote’s plains of La Mancha, as well.

One of the highlights of the trip was the excursion to Northern Africa to wander through a Moroccan city.

“It was like a movie,” student Ivy Diaz said. “You kept expecting an action hero to run down the street, but it was real. … I’ll never forget being there.”

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