Sentinel
Armed Forces Day: May 19
The Shorewood
Wednesday, May 16, 2012
Vol. 17 No. 23
Enterprise Publications • www.shorewoodsentinel.com
Contest Winners!
Voyager Media Mother’s Day Coloring Contest Winners won gift certificates to Village Flower Shop of Plainfield!
ce First Pla, Plainfield man Kimani Til
Second Place Brooke Ulreich, Joliet
Third P ce Maria Clark, Pla lainfield
Seeing the World Minooka students take part in travel abroad program By Sherri Dauskurdas Staff Reporter
Summer is nearly here, and for students across the suburbs the 11 or 12 weeks of break from school became a welcome respite of sleeping in, relaxing afternoons at a local pool, and family vacations. But for a group of Minooka area eighth-graders, it will mean touring Hiroshima, taking in some traditional puppet theater in Osaka, and meeting wild monkeys, making the “what I did on my summer vacation” essay an easy ‘A’. The teens are participating in an international travel abroad program, Minooka TAP, which will take them across the globe to Japan next month. Minooka TAP is a community program, created by a group of educators from Minooka schools. But the program is open to kids from anywhere in the area, is not affiliated with the district and is not district sponsored. The program takes groups of eighth grade students overseas to expand their knowledge and experience another culture. Since its inception in 2007, the group
has forged trips to Germany, England, Greece, Turkey, Italy, Vatican City, Ireland, and Northern Ireland, seeing amazing things like Buckingham Palace, the Parthenon, the Colosseum, the Sistine Chapel, and countless Irish castles.
“We set up our trips
so that each day brings something entirely different, so I think every day will be someone’s favorite,” Mike Curtis, literature teacher But it’s hardly a simple vacation. Rather, it’s the culmination of a long educational preparation for the student travelers. “One of the keys to the success of our program is the amount of time we spend teaching, learning, and preparing for our trips,” said Mike Curtis, a literature teacher and one of the program’s directors. Minooka TAP is a year-and-a-half-
long program that prepares kids for every aspect of their travel – from handling foreign money to connecting with ancient history – from experiencing a new culture to packing a suitcase efficiently. “We start taking applications in the fall of the students’ 7th grade year,” Curtis explained. “In 7th grade we work with them about once a month, getting them ready and learning about the basics of their destination. In 8th grade the meetings are about 2-3 times a month, covering everything from history and culture to food and music. Each week we also read literature and do short research assignments related to the places we’re visiting.” Completing these assignments is one of the requirements for traveling with the group, he added, and high school credit hours are offered for the work the kids put in during their preparation for travel. The program was created in 2006 after a group of teachers, looking at Minooka’s 8th grade curriculum, discussed the possibility of ending the school year with a trip to the See JAPAN, page 2