Help My Students Experience the World!

My name is Annie Anderson. I am a 7th grade Language Arts and Social Studies Teacher at a city school where more than 60% of our kids receive assistance. I am lucky to also be the leader of our Student Travel Club.

Our motto is "The World is Our Classroom"! Our goal is to take as many kids as possible on a travel adventure to experience Washington D.C on our annual end-of-8th grade trip, or on a once-in-a-lifetime international adventure. Before Covid, in 2018, I had the opportunity to take my middle school students on a 15-day adventure to Europe where we saw: the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace in London; went to the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris; saw the horrors of the Holocaust at the Dachau Concentration Camp; danced through the streets of Salzburg humming the Sound of Music; toured the castles of Vienna; experienced the Charles Bridge and the Underground of Prague; saw the remnants of the Berlin Wall and the Olympic Stadium where Jesse Owens beat the Nazis! In 2019, we went on an eco-adventure to Costa Rica where we were able to experience the rich culture while having amazing adventures like ziplining through the rainforest, hiking around volcanoes, and seeing monkeys, alligators, and Sea Turtles up close in the wild. Then Covid killed our adventures for 2 years. Now we are back to traveling the world this summer in Washington DC, Costa Rica, and Australia & New Zealand.

I want as many students as possible to be able to experience the world. However, these adventures are expensive and it is a real challenge for some of my students to be able to afford them. We do all sorts of fundraisers every year to help kids and their families experience the world outside of our classroom. But we could use some help!

Please read this article in the Capital Times about our Travel Club and consider supporting our students. O'Keeffe Travel Club gets back in the air

All donations will be used to help low-income students' educational travel opportunities.

Every year we take our 8th graders on a 5-day historic learning tour to Washington D.C. and then we invite all students on another big adventure. In 2023, we are going to Alaska for 6 days, and in 2024, we are going on a 12-day journey through the Galapagos Islands & Ecuador!

Where should we go next???