Vicarious Voyage

"Dear friends"... this was at the top of 22 letters that myself and a fellow SASer named Danny received earlier this week.  Danny and I are partners for something called Vicarious Voyage, a classroom-ship penpal program that has been part of Semester at Sea's traditional program opportunities since the early 90's. With over 5000 students participating over the years, Semester at Sea students have reached out to 50,000 K-12 students in 1500 classrooms across the country. While we are traveling the world, we communicate with the teachers, send packages back and forth, and give the students an up close look on the world they live in. Some classrooms have a theme that they are focusing on (such at latitude and longitude, or diversity) while others, such as ours, is just generally tracking our voyage and introducing the second grade students to other cultures. It is truly an incredible program and I am happy to be partaking in it.  It is so influential in fact, that one of the girls on our current voyage was part of a classroom when she was in fourth grade that was part of Vicarious Voyage, and now she is a Semester at Sea student herself.

Our students that we are paired with are from a school in New York and the teacher referred to them as a diverse population with varying abilities. Their letters certainly showed it, and I thoroughly enjoyed reading each and every one of them. There was one girl who said that she is from the Dominican Republic, another who, although it was erased, wrote that he doesn't listen, and yet another who wrote in pretty print letters about how she likes to read a lot because every day she learns how to read big words. This one girl also added that she likes books about Christmas because "I get presents and my whole family does." I got a lot of great laughs out of the letters, and can't wait to write them back and send our first package of things from Hawaii and the ship.

 While they clearly had a list of questions and "my favorite..."'s their teacher had supplied them with for the letters, I was amazed by how many of them wrote that their favorite thing to do is read. Having participated in a program that focused on increasing reading interest and abilities in pre-k children, and worked in schools where the biggest goal is to promote good reading habits, it is clear that reading has become to be an outdated activity among most children.  So, I thought this was great. When I return to Madison, I am hoping to promote the Vicarious Voyage in some of their schools, since after speaking to one of the staff in charge, she informed me that there are VERY few schools in the Midwest that participate. It is necessary to have schools all over, since Semester at Sea students are from all over, and one of the nicest parts about working with a school in NY is that we plan on visiting it after we return for the summer. I am so happy to have the opportunity to share the world with these twenty-two students this semester, and hope that they can grow and learn from it as much as I am.

Your friend,

Ali