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Date: 2/8/2022
EASTHAMPTON – After a one-year hiatus, the Easthampton High School World Language Club is planning another trip abroad. This time students and faculty will be going to the Galapagos islands.
Spanish and French teacher Toni Mango heads the World Language Club and has gone on many trips in the past with her students, including trips to Mexico, France, Italy, Guatemala and most recently Portugal, a month before the pandemic began. Mango typically chooses a few different options for the trip and lets her students vote on where to go.
“We try to do different trips every year to different places,” Mango said. “We generally get repeat travelers once they see how awesome it is. They get the travel bug I guess.”
Mango believes this trip serves students in many different ways, from going outside of their comfort zones in a different country to giving them an experience of what college and independent life may look like in the near future.
“It really is a classroom outside the classroom,” Mango said. “Students are learning how to interact with people and they’re rooming with different people. It’s very different for them, but learning how they have to modify how they are, work with other people, learn what their limits and strengths are, in terms of the next level of going to college and be off by themselves is something I see often.”
Mango mentioned a few examples of students in her past that she has seen really benefit from what the trip to another country has to offer, including one student who came away from the trip wanting to practice international law in college. Another student after a trip to Guatemala was set on working as a sign language interpreter with the Spanish speaking population in America.
Another student who Mango said was typically introverted came away from the trip more opened up than ever before, something fellow staff even noted to Mango.
“They learn more about the rest of the world and they learn how maybe they’re a lot more fortunate than they think they are,” Mango said. “Coming back, a lot of students have a different perspective of what the world is.”
Mango says the biggest thing she sees students getting out of the trip is that they get to travel and experience life outside of Easthampton and the New England region, calling it a precursor to what maybe their challenges and responsibilities might be when they move on to college. Students are put in unique situations in experiencing a new country that they learn and adapt from.
For funding the trip, the World Language Club typically puts on a variety of events to raise money from craft fairs to pasta supper fundraisers. Mango says a craft fair typically features about 60 or more local crafters and vendors to raise money for the students trip.
In past years, Mango has used fundraised money toward offering a scholarship to one to two students that apply and qualify with good enough grades and other criteria. But this year she is taking a different approach under the current circumstances.
“This year because I didn’t have the opportunity to award one person I gave each student money back towards their trip,” Mango said.
Other expenses the club are looking to cover from fundraising are tickets, tour expenses, bus drivers, an entry health fee to enter the Galapogos during the pandemic and other transportation and hotel services.
Mango also uses the remaining change from fundraising to treat her students to a small gift to serve as a memento for the trip, and even sometimes ice cream while on the trip. Any additional money remaining goes into an account and saved for possibly scholarships and expenses of the next trip.
Donations to the Easthampton World Language Club can be made on their donation page on snap-raise.com. According to the page, this fundraiser ends on Feb. 22. They have already raised almost $3,000 of their $5,000 goal. The trip itself will take place from April 13 to 21.