In Jules Verne’s classic novel, Phileas Fogg attempted to make his famous trip around the world in just 80 days, but Fogg could have learned a thing or two from the students at Signal Hill Elementary School, who recently made their own trip around the world in only three.
This year at Signal Hill, June 15, 16 and 17 marked the school’s second annual “Around the World in Three Days” activities.
During the three days, students spent their time educating one another about the people, foods, cultures, landmarks, geography and almost anything else one could think of from various countries around the world.
Students dined on foods from foreign lands, viewed student-created banners that illustrated features of various countries, marched in flag parades, learned to say hello in different languages, played games from different cultures and took part in all sorts of other multinational learned experiences.
Signal Hill teacher Daniel Riggs said the idea for the “Around the World in Three Days” event first came last year when the school was faced with an unusually late school year, having been forced to close for so many snow days in the winter.
Riggs, along with fellow teachers Jenna Gallo and Cherise Stankovitch, decided to collaborate and find a way to give the kids something to do with that extra time while still educating them, and soon “Around the World in Three Days” was born.
“The three us just kind of brainstormed and thought we have so many children in our school from different backgrounds that we might expose the children to the rest of the world,” Riggs said.
Riggs said another big component of of the activities were students being able to take tours of the school and listen to fifth-grade student experts detail information on replicas of world landmarks that had been created by other students with the help art teacher Kate Palumbo.
“Each landmark had a fifth-grade landmark expert who used their own time outside of school to research those landmarks and prepare very interactive presentations for the whole school,” Riggs said.
Stankovitch said the event also had the added bonus of allowing the halls to still be fun, decorative and educational at the end of the year where normally staff would be taking everything down, including bulletin boards that had questions posted to quiz students on their knowledge of different countries.
“Usually at this time of year, it’s really hard to get them to learn any new information, so this is a way,” Stankovitch said. “They were all engaged, excited, learning so much. They all want to travel around the world and see these places now.”
The school even had a large world map on the wall inside near the main entrance, with photos from trips children and their families have actually traveled.
“It’s neat to see where all the children have traveled, and they’re quite traveled,” Gallo said.
Principal Sharon Stallings said the event was just another way the school could continue on with its mission to “Inspire, Engage and Innovate” with its students and the ways they learn.
“Our school is very diverse, and it’s an opportunity for children from all of us to learn different things about each other,” Stallings said.
