Ten Years of the Casten Travel Program

h ac k l e y h a c k l e y r e v i e w W i n t e r 2 0 11 - 12

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Global Learning: Ten Years of Casten Trips at Hackley The Casten family, who have had a long association with Hackley School, began to contribute to a fund to provide opportunities for student/faculty travel more than a decade ago. The funds contributed by the Casten Family Foundation support an exceptional opportunity for students and faculty in Hackley’s Upper School to study different cultures.

Groups in a ratio of no more than two students per faculty member, representing multiple disciplines per trip, have traveled internationally to Belize, China, the Galapagos Islands, Honduras, Italy, Peru, Russia, Thailand and Vietnam to study language, culture, climate, and history. In the summer of 2011, students and faculty traveled to India, Peru, and Senegal.

Chaperones for these recent trips included faculty from the History, Modern Languages, English, and Technology Departments. The perspectives gained during these trips have offered rich lessons to participants as well as the entire Hackley community, for they contribute to classroom discussions throughout the Upper School. Formal presentations to the Upper School community also follow each trip. Many trips have included a service element, such as a recycling project in Senegal, working with elementary school students in Peru, and helping relocated farmers in Guatemala return to traditional, sustainable agricultural practices.

The Casten Travel Program is one part of the global education initiative at Hackley. This initiative focuses on connecting classrooms to their counterparts around the world, exploiting global richness within our existing curriculum and creating new courses, such as Modern Africa and Modern Latin America,

bringing speakers and performers with a global perspective to campus, and providing students with enrichment opportunities and faculty with professional development with an eye to awareness of global issues. The new Community Studies Departmentwhich combines Global Education, Sustainability, Community Service, and Diversity — allows for the natural overlap among these areas so that we may more easily educate and provide opportunities to the community.

The Casten Travel Program provides financial aid funding for all participating students commensurate with the aid they receive to attend Hackley. It also supports faculty participation. In some cases, the Casten trips provide a student’s first opportunity to travel outside the Tri-State area, let alone experience Japan or Peru.

On the following pages, we share some resonant moments from the 2011 Casten Trips, in celebration of the ten years of Casten Travel opportunities that have so memorably shaped the Hackley experience. Here’s how some of this year’s trip participants responded to the question, “What made this trip so amazing?” a drianne pierce, allstrom chair, and kevin rea, assistant headmaster

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“ I slowly began to process what I was seeing outside the car window.... How am I accustomed to this already?

And more so, how is this possibly ‘everyday’ life?”

– dorothea trufelman ’12

Peru “Amazing” was the landscape from the desert Pacific coast to the lush peaks high in the Andes, Tia Pia and all of Ben’s family, sitting around the dining room table talking to presidential candidate Pedro Pablo Kuczynski about political issues and the future of Peru, riding the Peruvian Passo horses, the phenomenal Incan ruins, haggling at the market, the traffic, the chemistry lesson Dr. Ying gave at the winery, touring the fruit processing plant watching the fruit being prepared for market [and knowing that we might be seeing it in New York!], the floating islands where people live on Lake Titicaca, traveling in a bus for 13 hours mostly on a dirt road at an altitude reaching 14,500 feet passing a massive open pit copper mine in the middle of nowhere with no place to stop [for anything!], climbing up and down 600 stone steps on Taquile, drinking Inca Cola and chincha, eating many different types of choclo (corn), and seeing flamingos in the barren mountains.

And from the viewpoint of the chaperones, most amazing was experiencing the wonders of ancient Peru while contrasting it with the diversity of contemporary Peru in the company of a terrific group of curious students who made the trip such a success. jennie lyons, diane remenar and andrew ying, trip chaperones

I was struck by the overpowering happiness of the children. We were able to bring a piece of the outside world to the smiley children of this rural town. Things that we think of as normal were beyond incredible to the children. The bubbles we brought fascinated and dazzled the children of the nursery school. Today we brought color to the lives of children normally deprived of toys and accustomed to a life of poverty. ben rosen ’13 on our visit bringing toys to the children in a rural nursery school in the town of roma For the Incans the rising of the sun was the start of a new day. The sun allowed them to farm and ultimately survive. They even had a sun god who is arguably their most prominent god. Similarly, the rising of the sun was also the start of a new adventure for us. It not only ended the period of coldness, but also cast a spotlight upon Machu Picchu. This simple act made Machu Picchu look even more breathtaking than before. The sun allowed for the stone structures to cast beautiful shadows, many of which had special meaning. rachel chan ’13

Touring New Delhi.

Upon arriving for dinner at the Club Nacional in Lima, it was interesting to think that just 36 hours ago, we were in one of the poorest towns in Peru and now, we were in the most elite building of all. We ended the night with dessert and a walk out onto the balcony where we overlooked one of the main squares to see the beauty Lima had to offer at night.

Bus ride in Senegal.

kathryn harmon ’13

Opposite page, clockwise from top: The Stairs of Death, Peru.

Clockwise from top: Greeting the sunrise at Machu Picchu and the sunrise over the mountain.

Blowing bubbles with children in Peru.

Working with the community in Senegal.

Transportation in New Delhi.

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Senegal

India

Riding around in a work of art. Chugging through the swirling sand, choking exhaust, and throngs of people and livestock, the “Commun Transport” buses of Dakar, Senegal not only showcased the major sights and sounds of this former French colony, but did so in style. Dakar, a major port city in West Africa, is a cosmopolitan blend of peoples and cultures. Students and chaperones on the fourteen-day trip were led on tours of expansive markets, museums, art, and the modern and colonial architecture of this city, racing from the past into a promising future. Led by a local professor, trip participants met with local university students in order to bridge and overcome cultural misconceptions between two vastly different cultures. All in all, students not only brought home African names and identities, but also left a little piece of themselves in a country destined for greatness.

Our cab ride from the Delhi International Airport to the Crest Inn was probably one of the most riveting experiences that one could witness in a less-than-anhour car ride. It suddenly hit me all at once that all the movies, books, and front cover newspaper images depicting India’s vast poverty were real. This place actually exists outside from our TV screens. Though Slumdog Millionaire did do the landscape justice, it seems nearly impossible to graphically capture the society that hordes around us, fully active — even at midnight right now. While trying not to focus on how I may not even make it to see the hotel with the way our driver was driving (he, and every car on the road going at least 80 MPH, never mind there seemingly not being a right side of the road), I slowly began to process what I was seeing outside the car window and, disturbingly enough, already becoming adjusted to: half-naked babies joyously rolling in piles of garbage and waste, translucent-skinned stray dogs with rib cadges fully protruding, and countless people missing more than a few limbs. How am I accustomed to this already? And more so, how is this possibly ‘everyday’ life?

brad walters, trip chaperone

dorothea trufelman ’12

Ten Years of Casten Trips

2001

2005

2010

Italy

Greece

Jamaica

Galapagos Islands

Costa Rica

London

well as faculty drawn from every academic discipline have traveled

China

2006

Since 2001, Hackley students as

to many destinations across four of the six world continents and have changed the way we define learning on the Hilltop.

2002 Amazon Rainforest/Peru

New Orleans

2011

Machu Picchu Peru

India

2007 2003

Nicaragua

Belize Russia

2008 Japan

2004

Peru

Honduras Vietnam

2009

Hong Kong,

Guatemala

Singapore

Malawi

Thailand

Brazil

Peru Senegal Planned for 2012 Japan Argentina & Uruguay Kenya