Travel helps students connect learning with life. They reach new levels of achievement using classroom lessons to understand the places they visit and communicate with the people they meet. The self-confidence they gain from these experiences becomes the foundation for a lifetime of discovery. Confucius once said, ‘I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.’ By walking in the footsteps of emperors, seeing the art that inspired a society and speaking a new language to communicate, students are engaging themselves and become life-long, self-directed learners.
ACIS tours maximizes the intrinsic value of travel. Education on an ACIS trip doesn’t happen on a schedule; it’s a constant—woven into the fabric of everything you do.
What we believe in:
Authentic experiences
Students know what’s real. They’ll roll their eyes and close their minds at contrived activities. To fully engage them, we focus on authentic experiences you can only have in the places you’re traveling.
Making connections
The beginning of critical thinking is making connections between events. This is where our tour managers shine. If your group visits a WWII battle site, your tour manager might ask about family members who served in the war. If you look at a Florentine painting dated 1781, your tour manager might ask what was happening in the US at that time.
Engaging multiple intelligences
All students learn differently: some are lingual learners, some spatial, some experiential. ACIS Tour Managers are trained to work with multiple intelligences and provide a mix of learning experiences that appeal to every type of learner.
ACIS Learning Standards
All ACIS tours enhance learning by:
- Engaging students with the sights, sounds, smells and flavors of cultures, languages and people.
- Raising awareness of cultural and historical diversity to help students develop a global perspective.
- Encouraging students to become self-directed learners, gaining self-confidence in their abilities to face new situations successfully.
Learning objectives
Focused learning is effective learning. That’s why we identify three specific Learning Objectives for each ACIS tour. The Learning Objectives are educational lessons we guarantee will be highlighted during the tour. Examples of Learning Objectives are mastering the difference between Baroque and NeoClassical art and becoming acquainted with the Medici family and its powerful influence on the politics and artistic production of Florence during the Renaissance.
Pre-tour Preparation
One of the oldest rules of travel is the more you know before you go, the more you’ll see and experience when you’re there. To help group leaders and participants get the most of their time abroad, each ACIS Group Leader will receive a customized “learning pack” before departure. The pack will include information about your touring destinations’ language, history and culture, as well as activities and “how-to” papers to help keep your educational goals in focus before, during and after your travel.
