I’m always surprised to learn how many people are following
my trip. I receive emails and
comments from friends and family in Oregon, people back in Barcelona, Thomson
Bike Tour Clients, previous hosts, students at schools I visited, parents of
students at schools I visited, emails from people I meet out on the road, to
random strangers who stumble across my website. I never imagined my trip would permeate the world as it has!
It excited me to learn about the schools that have been
following my trip, after all that was my original idea when I set out on The
Loong Way Home. I wanted to was to
reach out to schools worldwide in hopes that teachers, students, and parents
would use the teaching section of my website as a resource for learning and to
drive investigation. Embarking on
my endeavor meant giving up my classroom, but in reality the only thing I’m
missing is the physical presence of the four walls because as you see, the world
has become my classroom. Today it
is the southwest, soon it will be the Colorado Rockies, and after that open
countryside and plains. My colleagues who I met with daily at BFIS to plan
aren’t with me, but they’ve been replaced by my knowledgeable and entertaining
hosts, park rangers with their inside information, and by other cyclists, and
friendly strangers who I encounter on the road. My students?
They are out there too, from the people I meet every day when I stop for
a snack or end my day at a campground. They are the curious strangers who want
me to share my experiences and whose questions I answer, even if it means
repeating myself every 15 miles down the road. But, actually, I also do
have students out there in classrooms who have been religiously following The
Loong Way Home since the day I left Barcelona.
My most dedicated followers come from the classrooms where
Neus Bruguera works as a support teacher at Sa Graduada in Mahon, Spain one of
the Balearic Islands off the coast of Northeast Spain. Oddly enough, I have never met her,
although I’m a good friend of her brother, Vicens, who rode with me from
Barcelona to Nice, France and has been an incredible support to me throughout
my trip with the technical logistics.
From my email interaction with Neus and her students, it is obvious she
is a dedicated teacher. She has
been using “The Teacher on 2 Wheels Website” since September and created
several projects in various classrooms related to my trip. It’s quite remarkable considering most
of the content on my website is in English. However, the English department at her school uses my
website as a resource in their English classes because it help promote real
world language learning, something I didn’t imagine happening, but an
incredibly valid occurrence.
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| This letter makes me laugh as the students says I have my husband waiting for me at home when I arrive. Does he know something that I don't know? One of their assignments in class was to do a newspaper article summarizing The Loong Way Home |
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I received a bunch of cards from the 4th grade class when I reached the 15,000 km milestone, what a surprise!
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Neus and her students consult my website weekly, read the
blog posts, watch videos and go through my picture albums I post on
Flickr. They have turned my trip
into a language and geography lesson.
During the middle of the school year, they wrote reports summarizing my
trip thus far and sharing with me their opinion of my trip. I was absolutely delighted to receive
their letters, evidence of the time and energy they had been investing in my
project. In fact, I got goose
bumps as I read their commentary and also had a few good laughs at their
interpretation of my trip. You
can’t imagine how much I learned from them reading their letters, gaining
perspective and insight to how 10 to 12 year olds digest the world.
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| This card came to me with others from the class when I arrived in Australia |
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| One of their assignments in class was to do a newspaper article summarizing The Loong Way Home |
Early on in my trip, one student in particular reached out
to me in a special way. Lucia, a 5th
year student at Sa Graduada Mao, wrote me an email with a special request. She was looking for a penpal in
Australia because she wanted to learn more about the country. Little did I know the request would
turn into a wonderful learning journey for Lucia and her classmates in
Mao. In my opinion school,
especially in the early years, is all about developing your interests,
passions, and inquiring about your curiosities. This is exactly what happened for Lucia as she learned about
Australia, excited and anxious to establish a penpal relationship with a young
girl her age in Australia. She and
her friends made videos about Australia and my travels in Australia after researching
all about the country.
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| Lucia explains about the letter she sent in this video |
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| Lucia thanks me in this video after giving her letter to several students in Australia |
With the help of her English teachers, Neus, and parents,
Lucia prepared a letter to her unknown future pen pal, introducing herself and
sharing with them a bit about her family, friends, and culture. She sent the letter to my parents in
Oregon, who brought it over to me in Australia and I delivered it to various
classes at the schools I visited in Australia. Back in Mahon, Lucia anxiously
awaited a response. The school
year is just about to come to an end and it looks like the students at Mother
Teresa Catholic School in Melbourne have responded. Neus tells me how much Lucia admires my travels, but the
truth is, this young lady is a true inspiration to me! She is passionate about learning,
curious, and driven to research and explore the world around her. She’s confident, open-minded and pushes
herself just outside her comfort level to grow and learn about the world. If kids her age had just half the
motivation and interest she has to learn, the world’s problems would be solved
by our future generation in a heartbeat. Something tells me with the contact
she has now established with the students in Australia and her continued
curiosities; she has opened the door to a world of opportunities. (Here are the links to her other videos
Introduction Video,
Lucia and her friends,
Australia Video)
Thank you students at Sa Graduada Maó for all your support
throughout the year! You are some
of my youngest and smallest followers but you have the biggest heart and are
constantly curious. Although there
are about to go on summer break, I’m sure many of them will continue to follow
my travels during the summer and once the school year starts again in
September, I’m sure I’ll hear from them again!
Institut Escola Turo de Roquetes in the Barcelona area is
another Spanish school that has been loyal followers. My friend Nuri, and fellow cycle companion from the Gracia
Cycling Club teaches the 6
th graders. This year her students have been involved with an entirely
self-directed class research project.
They chose the topic of cycling and Nuri turned them on to my trip as
one of the many facets of the sport.
Nuri religiously used my teaching resources in her classroom, including
the math problems, writing prompts, and inquiry questions I posed bi-weekly (in
fact she even translated them into Catalan from Spanish!) Their dedication to my trip was
flattering, to say the least.
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| This is part of the classes documentation of my trip included in their research project. |
During the later half of the school year, we set up a Skype
date so that students could complete their inquiry and investigation
surrounding my trip. Nuri and her
students compiled a booklet of their work and sent it to me, giving me an idea
of their project and how it was organized. The quality of their work is fascinating and I attribute it
to the power of choice. When
motivated and interested in a subject area, students capability surpass the
expectations of any teacher. The
bicycle is worldwide icon and people of all ages can relate to and motivate
learning. In fact, Nuri admitted
that her student’s attitude and behavior changed dramatically in class when they
started their bike and cycling project.
They prepared an extensive interview and each student had a question for
me as we Skyped, me from San Fransisco, while they were in class in Barcelona. The biggest surprise of all was a
neat video they prepared showing me how they have been follwoing my travels.
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| Here is part of their project, photos from the different places I cycled |
As teachers, it is easy for us to get caught-up in our
day-to-day routine and feel the pressure of making sure we cover all the
curriculum during the school year.
We can get obsessed with making sure our students are reading on grade
level, competent writers, and meeting the benchmarks for their grade in the
different subject matters. While I
do believe that traditional academics are important, this trip has changed the
way I think about school and our education system. Kids learn everywhere and anywhere, and it’s important to
foster an environment that motivates them to learn so that they become
passionate inquirers. For some
this may happen in a classroom setting, for others, it will be a phenomenon
that occurs beyond the four walls in a school….and for a select few it happened
while following Ms. Melissa, “The Teacher on 2 Wheels” traveling around the
world on her bicycle.
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