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Canfield students traveling to China for summer trip
By ROBERT CONNELLY
CANFIELD
Dean Conley and Jean Snavely always have wanted to take Canfield High School students to China.
The two are co-social-studies teachers for sophomores, juniors and seniors and already have led trips to Italy, Spain and Germany.
Now, they are finally taking kids to China.
“We’ve felt there has always been interest. ... We just kept running into roadblocks. Some of them completely out of our control,” such as security issues or the SARS outbreak, Conley said.
Conley and Snavely are going on the trip with nine students, two parents and one grandparent from June 27 to July 8.
Each student paid between $3,200 and $3,800 to go.
There is a 12-hour time difference and a 14-to-15-hour flight. Canfield students will be part of a larger group with students from Florida and Boston.
The Education First tour will take them to tourist locations such as the Great Wall of China, and they also will visit rural areas and share a local meal with a local family.
Conley and Snavely are looking forward to being in a Chinese classroom for one day to witness such aspects as the longer school day.
“We definitely teach those places differently after we’ve visited them,” Conley said. “You can read in a book about a concentration camp in Germany or you can read in a book about the Sistine Chapel and the ceiling, but until you are standing there looking at those ovens or you’re standing there looking up at the ceiling, you don’t have any idea what it is to experience it.”
“It’s just those experiences that the students and us as adults get out of these” trips, Snavely said.
The Canfield Board of Education approved the trip at its May 20 meeting.
“Not every school allows their students to travel,” Snavely said as both teachers thanked the school district for the opportunity.
Conley said he’s ready to experience life in China – even for a short period of time.
“I’m not going to like [trying] Tai Chi, but I’m going to do it,” Conley said as he laughed.