My takeaways from the opening session (part 2)

This year's keynote speaker was travel author and guide Rick Steves. I'm embarrassed to say that I knew nothing about him before this conference, so I really didn't know what to expect. I almost didn't go, but boy am I glad I did!

The theme for Steves' talk was "Travel as a Political Act," also the title of his most recent book. He walked us through several of his travel experiences and spoke to how they have helped shape his world view.  The main theme to his talk (for me) boiled down to his statement that travel humanizes us and others and therefore makes it harder for propaganda to dehumanize.


According to Steves, travel forces us to "find ourselves in situations where we aren't the norm." It makes us step back and reassess the idea of norm altogether. I loved his comments on the American dream. Steves highlighted the fact that everyone has their own dream, and it's important for us to recognize that the whole world is not searching for the American version as we often tend to believe.

Steves also addressed the value of travel in overcoming the fear that societies develop towards others, especially in times of strife. He said "the flip side to fear is understanding." Fear of the other drives us to do things we wouldn't necessarily do otherwise (and we could think of a list of examples even happening around us today,) but gaining a truer understanding of the other combats that fear. By meeting people from other cultures - talking to the other - we learn that, in the end, we are all human facing the same human needs and desires for ourselves and our families.

One last quote I loved was that travel lets us "see history is happening for real." We often think of history as the past. I guess in technical terms it is, but that past can be 5 minutes ago. If we never leave our town or our state, we run the risk of forgetting that history is made every minute of every day in every place. Travel helps us to see those places in our history books and in the news and remember that they are alive and constantly making new history.

So, bringing this back home to our students, we would love for everyone to study abroad, but realistically, that's never going to happen. Therefore, how can we foster transformational experiences for our students locally?