JESSIEVILLE -- A social studies teacher at Jessieville High School hopes to gather a group of students and adults to travel in the summer of 2019 on an official tour through Germany and the Alps.
Alex Bates, a teacher and the gifted and talented coordinator for the Jessieville School District, is working to recruit local travelers for a July 2019 tour through Germany, Austria, Liechtenstein and Switzerland. It will be Bates' fourth trip to Europe and her third as a teacher.
"It is a cultural learning experience," Bates said. "It is a learning experience where you're actually standing in the place the lesson is taking place, almost. It is more real and, for me, that is very important because I like to go, I like to go see, I like to go touch. I thought I like doing this and maybe other people would like it, too."
The cost is $3,750 for students and can be paid in full for less than $200 per month with a payment plan beginning this month. The cost for adults is $4,200, which can be paid in 19 payments of about $221.
Bates said the price can be daunting for potential travelers, but emphasized the cost of the trip includes round-trip airfare, comfortable motor coach travel, a full-time tour director, daily breakfast and dinner, dining reservations, seven nights in European hotels with private restrooms, chaperones, a 24-hour emergency on-call service and a plethora of planned educational and recreational activities. Education First has offered educational travel plans since 1965.
"It is a lot of great experiences," Bates said. "The reason I like taking kids on tours like this is because they get to see the wider part of the world, but it is with a company that has been doing this for more than 50 years. They know what they are doing, they have a lot of safety measures in place and the pricing is all-inclusive."
The group will land in Frankfurt and tour the town of Rothenburg before spending two days in Munich to visit sites such as the Olympiastadion, Residenz royal palace and Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site. The itinerary includes a tour of Neuschwanstein Castle before the group reaches Lake Lucerne near the Swiss Alps.
Travelers will tour Lucerne, Switzerland, and see the Löwendenkmal monument. The next day includes travel through the Black Forest to Heidelberg Castle back in Germany.
Eligible students will be in grades 9-12. Bates said she visited Ireland as a student in graduate school and fell in love with travel. She also travel to Hanamaki, Japan, as a delegate through the Visit Hot Springs Sister City Program.
"I like being able to go and see what I read about," Bates said. "For the kids, I think there is a similar element to that, because I can tell them all day about the Roman Coliseum and how they had a network of tunnels underneath for the gladiators to move.
"If they are standing in the Coliseum with a professional archaeologist standing there telling them about it in the emperor's box, that is something completely different."
Bates first traveled as a teacher to Italy in 2016. Education First's pricing includes entry fees to sites such as the Coliseum and the Roman Forum.
Her next venture this past summer took a group to England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Bates credited the tour director for leading them on a variety of fun, local events.
Bates met with potential travelers in October to share information about the tour. She said she plans to meet with more students and their families this month.
Local on 11/03/2017