From rain forests to savannas, spring break has a new look

For spring break this year, Paris and Madrid seemed too tame, so high school sophomore George Tew chose to visit Costa Rica, where he and 17 classmates studied the ecosystem and worked on conservation projects.

“When Costa Rica came up this year, it stood out from the rest because it’s small and not in Europe,” he said a few days before departing on the weeklong journey. “Just a chance to go to the rain forest and a volcano I thought would be so cool.”

George is among a growing number of high school -- and middle school -- students using spring break to travel abroad on trips that can cost thousands of dollars and include traditional sightseeing as well as community service and language studies.

Although there are no firm statistics on the growth of teen travel abroad, a 2006 study by Michigan State University estimated expenditures for 12- to 18-year-olds on overnight domestic and foreign group trips at more than $9.8 billion. That age group, the survey shows, is a growing segment of the travel market. Spring is the most popular travel period, and 40% of the trips are sponsored by schools.

Many schools send students across the country to national monuments or on college scouting trips, but increasing numbers are adding foreign travel opportunities as a corollary to the trend of providing a global curriculum.

George, a student at the private Viewpoint School in Calabasas, has at age 16 traveled to more far-flung locales than many adults. During a spring break trip sponsored by his school last year, he explored Italy with 26 classmates, practicing his reading of Latin in the ancient city of Pompeii.

More schools are providing financial aid or scholarships for students whose families would otherwise not be able to afford the trips. Private donations and a portion of Viewpoint’s financial aid budget of more than $2 million help pay for some expenses on the trips, which cost $1,900 to $3,300 per student, depending on the destination, said Chad Tew, George’s father and the school’s chief financial officer.

Many students still spend spring break at the nearest party or at home trying to avoid homework until the last minute. But overseas travel is on the rise, for students of public and private schools alike.

Experts point to a number of reasons for the travel boom, including requirements at many schools for student volunteer work, enhancing resumes for college applications and even parental guilt over the lack of time spent with children.

“Some parents are trying to make up for that by giving kids these travel experiences that a generation ago wouldn’t have been on the radar screen,” said Donald F. Holecek, director of the Student and Youth Travel Research Institute at Michigan State University. “These trips are also becoming educational necessities for students and parents. In terms of having an impact, touching, seeing and doing will stay in the brain, while work from textbook or lectures might slide by.”

The International School of the Peninsula in Palo Alto, a private dual-language immersion school, each year sends seventh- and eighth-graders to France, China or Mexico, where they speak the language, spend time in classrooms and go on day trips.

Students at the Francis Parker School, a private kindergarten through 12th-grade campus in San Diego, are completing a two-week trip to South Africa, including a stay at the Savannah Wildlife Preserve where they are studying a cheetah breeding program.

In a daily journal posted on the school’s website, the students wrote of attending Easter services at the First African Methodist Church in Tumahole Township, clapping and singing with the congregation. After a tour of the township the students returned to the preserve, relaxing at the pool after a spaghetti dinner.

“Some of us went for a run around the preserve, and got to see animals in the distance,” the students wrote. “There was a giraffe not too far away, cows, horses, impala, sable, and a herd of wildebeests. The day was perfect.”

Claire McKinley, 17, a Francis Parker senior, went on the South Africa trip two years ago and returned with a passion for international travel. She wants to work in international development after college.

“I was very much on the fence when I saw the package about South Africa,” McKinley recalls. “I wasn’t going to go until a friend said she was going. I went home and figured my parents would say no and that would be the end of it. But they said it would be crazy to miss an opportunity like this. I was not that excited, and now it is something I would never imagine missing.”

Twenty-one students from the Punahou School and the Sacred Hearts Academy in Hawaii toured Vietnam and earned up to 14 hours of community service credit for charitable projects at two orphanages, including providing bags of clothes, stuffed animals and school and medical supplies. Punahou math teacher Vinh Dang, who was born in Vietnam and escaped by boat in 1980 with his sister, led the students -- the eighth group he’s taken to his homeland.

“This trip is very different from a European trip,” Dang said days before the group left Honolulu for Ho Chi Minh City. “They have to go through all the shots, they know the weather is going to be hot and they have to like the food. If you’re going eat pizzas and hamburgers, there’s no point in going to Vietnam.”

Twenty-five students from Catlin Gabel School, a private campus in Portland, Ore., left last week for Cuba on a rare humanitarian permit for an 11-day stay.

Spanish teacher Roberto Villa, who led student trips to Cuba in 2001 and 2003, said the group will deliver almost 500 pounds of personal hygiene products, school supplies, flash drives, cellphones, digital music players, sports gear and medical supplies, including HIV-AIDS antivirals. They will meet with students, diplomats and cultural figures, such as noted film director Humberto Solas, and on their return will prepare a presentation for a community-wide assembly scheduled for May. The cost for each student is $3,385.

After stories in the local media, the trip won support but also prompted condemnation for taking students to the communist state.

But student Bhakthi Sahgal, 16, asked, “Can people not put aside their political views for one minute and think about people suffering? We’re going there to think for ourselves. I don’t think closed-mindedness is going to get us anyplace.”

Chad Tew, who accompanied Viewpoint students to Italy last year, said the trips will not only enrich the lives of students but create better global citizens.

“Viewpoint is in a small corner of the San Fernando Valley,” he said. “But in Rome, visiting this interesting culture, watching these kids as they saw things that were so much older than they’d ever seen before, this was something that affected these kids and changed their paradigm and perspective about the world.”

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carla.rivera@latimes.com