Student Travel
An Integral Part of the Waring Experience
Travel has been a part of Waring since the early days of the school, and is an expression of the Warings’ belief that travel promotes intellectual curiosity and individual growth. Traveling engenders curiosity and helps groups and classes become a more cohesive and supportive unit. On Waring trips, students are exposed to history, art, and culture. They are asked to observe, sketch, and write about their experiences and share with their peers, as well as relate these experiences back to Waring’s curriculum.
Waring trips are a direct extension of many Waring programs and are designed to enrich, make real, and deepen our students’ studies as well as to allow for learning that could happen no other way. Travel removes the classroom from the act of learning and shows students that it can happen everywhere.
Montreal Trip
The Montreal Trip is a three day, two night trip that Core takes each spring. The students visit the Biodôme and art museums, they eat at restaurants of varied cuisines, and they hear French spoken in everyday situations. They share space with classmates in a youth hostel for two nights and are challenged by being away from the comforts of home. The trip is an enriching growth experience that deepens the students’ understanding of their coursework and helps them develop the skills and habits they will need to participate in future Waring trips.
Alabama Trip
Group 1 has the opportunity to travel to Montgomery, Alabama on a four day Civil Rights trip. During the four days, students visit seminal civil rights locations, including the Edmund Pettus Bridge, the location of Rosa Parks’ arrest, and the National Memorial for Peace and Justice. While traveling in Alabama, students will have many opportunities to make deep and meaningful connections to the topics they study in Group 1 Humanities.
9th Grade French Exchange Program
The ninth grade French Exchange Program is central to the Waring experience. Each year, Waring freshmen are paired with French correspondents of similar ages, and share a host of linguistic and cultural experiences over the course of the year. Waring students both travel to their correspondents’ homes in France for nearly a month and host their correspondents back home for two to three weeks. Past partner schools have been in Angers, Bordeaux, and Nantes.
The relationships formed between not just the students, but sometimes their families as well, often endure well past ninth grade and allow students to make the study of French and France a lifelong experience rather than just an academic class.
Junior Trip
Waring’s Junior Trip has been a tradition at the school since 1982. The trip takes place in June as the students are preparing to become senior leaders. The Junior Trip is an extension of the curriculum, and students spend time writing and sketching as well as giving presentations about the sites they visit.
Junior Trip allows our older students to feel personal ownership of a city, a culture, and a language. Paris is always a significant part of the trip, and students visit a variety of museums and other cultural sites. All of the experiences reflect parts of our program, including visits that relate to the humanities and visual and performing arts programs. Students are given the opportunity to be independent and exercise their language skills, gaining confidence in their ability to navigate a foreign city.
Junior Trip emphasizes personal responsibility and fosters leadership skills and awareness of the needs of the group. On the last night of the trip, students reflect on their experience together and are officially recognized as the new school leaders.
STUDENT-MADE FILMS
Designed to Enrich, Make Real, and Deepen Our Students’ Studies
Travel at Waring follows an intentional arc beginning with Camping Trip, where the whole school is away for three nights together every September. The arc continues with the two-night trip to Montreal for Core (Grades 6 and 7), the three-to-four-week exchange in western France for Group 2 (Grade 9), and culminates in the three-week Junior Trip. Each trip has slightly higher expectations and demands, taking the students a little further away from home and entrusting them with more independence and responsibility. Many Waring students also travel as part of their coursework. For example, there have been Group 1 (Grade 8) trips to Montgomery, Alabama and Washington, D.C. as well as many Endterm trips each year.
Waring travel has personal as well as academic goals. Students learn to think about the needs of the group and to try things that pull them outside of their comfort zones. In the process, their relationship with the group and their teachers is strengthened.
Véronique Valdettaro
Trips Coordinator
Véronique joins Waring with 33 years of experience at the International School of Boston. Beginning as a French teacher, she later embraced roles in Drama Teaching, Costume Design, and Event Planning. While predominantly a Librarian, she also served as the Executive Assistant. Now starting a new chapter in Beverly, Véronique holds a “Maitrise de Linguistique” from University Paris 7 and an MLS from Salem State.
