A Transformative Travel Proposal

By Krista McAtee
Sonoma State University
December 2014

Committee Chair
Kathy Morris

Introduction
Five years ago, I was looking for a way for my three children to see what it is like to live in other
parts of the world and to get a sense of their own personal ability to make the world a better place. In
August of this year, we came back from our fourth service trip to El Salvador. We volunteer for a
nonprofit agency called ESNA Village Network (El Salvador/North America). Over the past four
years we have helped build classrooms, built a school kitchen, delivered many ecococinas (efficient,
clean and safe stoves), taught math games, read books, helped build a childcare center, painted
murals, mixed concrete, installed solar lighting, taught English, developed relationships and, more
than anything else, learned priceless lessons about ourselves and the world. This year I took
seventeen youth and two adults on the two-week journey. The trips to El Salvador have become a
part of the way my children and many of the participants define themselves, a part of their identity.
In November of 2013 I took youths who had traveled with me to El Salvador to the National
Association of Multicultural Educators (NAME) conference to give a presentation about our trips.
Two of my students told stories of their own personal growth and reflections when they went to help
others in an impoverished community in El Salvador. They spoke about the importance of the
relationships they built with the cooks, the soldiers and the students. They learned lessons about the
value of slowing down, stopping and just being. They spoke about the lessons they learned through
connecting to people and listening to their stories.

The travel cost for these powerful trips is often prohibitive to low-income youth. For four years now
my mother and my aunt have made thousands of cookies for bake sales so that we could send youth
whose parents could not afford to contribute financially to the trip. This year, of the seventeen youths
who traveled with us, ten were Latinos, most of them from families living below the poverty line.
Our experience was unforgettable. We made memories that will be a huge part of all of our lives
forever! I was particularly impressed with three siblings who joined us. Their mom was an

economics professor in Mexico City. In the US she cleans houses. On Mothers day when she spent
the entire day selling cookies in front of a local grocery story with her children, she was amazed by
the donations we had received. When we finished counting the $1,130 we raised that day, she half
whispered with awe in her voice, Con suerte, puedo ganar esto en un mes! (With luck, I can make
this much in a month!) They all had life changing experiences over the two weeks we were there. So
much so, that the girls have written the first draft of a book about a special part of their trip.

Based on the course work I have completed in the Curriculum, Teaching and Learning program at
Sonoma State University and in the technology cognate, I will leverage what I have learned to create
a web presence that will facilitate my ability to make this kind of transformative travel more easily
accessible to marginalized youths from our community. That web presence will have three aspects:
an educational or rational part, a funding component and an online community with an interest based,
participatory component. These three components will allow me to access funders and possible
participants as well as tap youth energy, motivation and understandings about social justice and their
social media abilities so that we can all participate in a community; learning, growing and effecting
change and social justice in our world.

The Project Plan

I plan to develop a web presence that articulates the need for Transformative Travel Experiences for
youth as well as a rationale as to why these experiences should be available to youth from
marginalized populations. I will use research, interviews of youth, photos, journal entries and
testimonials about this work by people of El Salvador to demonstrate the value of Transformative
Travel. The purpose for this web presence is threefold. First, it will allow me to educate possible
funders as well as possible travelers, about the transformative nature of travel on youth as well as the
communities they visit. Second it will help to raise funds for marginalized youth to participate. Third

it will engage youth in a collaborative participatory culture focusing on creating change in the
world. This will be an avenue to create an online community in which youth can participate in
conversations about issues of justice and equity in international travel.
Technology and social media in particular are powerful ways to meet these objectives for several
reasons. The first goal of educating potential funders and travelers about the transformative nature of
travel is expanded greatly with the use of a web presence. The internet has a much broader possible
audience than simply writing an article for our local paper or making announcements in the school
bulletin. As boyd suggests, What can you see that you couldn't before? How does this make you
feel? And what are you going to do about it? Perhaps its time that we embrace visibility and take a
moment to look. Take a moment to see. And, most importantly, take a moment to act. (2009, p. 1).
An online platform will provide a window into the lives of people in marginalized and indigenous
communities around the world. Youth and prospective funders will have the opportunity to look
deeply, reflect and hopefully act to make some changes. According to Osotimehin, Over the next
decade and beyond, if we are to solve the most pressing issues of our time, we need to tap into the
dynamism of youth movements and young social entrepreneurs, for they have the potential to disrupt
inertia and be the most creative forces for social change. We need to ask ourselves: how can we
empower youth to drive social progress in the developing world through new and innovative
projects? (2012). This is my goal, to empower youth and especially marginalized youth in the
United States to become social advocates and to improve communities around the world.

The goal of generating funding for the participation of marginalized youth in transformative travel
experiences will be possible by utilizing crowdfunding as one component. I imagine there are other
ways to use an online platform to gain funding, but I am not familiar with them. This is one area in
which I will need to develop expertise as I design my web presence. I have read about many
different online platforms for crowdfunding and understand that there are two general types; reward

and equity based. However I do not know the advantages and disadvantages of various platforms.
This will be part of my research.

The third goal is creating a participatory online community. A participatory culture as defined by
Jenkins, is a culture with relatively low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement; with
strong support for creating and sharing ones creations with others; with some type of informal
mentorship whereby what is known by the most experienced is passed along to novices; where
members believe that their contributions matter; where members feel some degree of social
connection with one another (at the least they care what other people think about what they have
created). (Jenkins, et al. 2006). These are the aspects of participatory community I hope to create
with my web presence. As argued by Jenkens, Our goals should be to encourage youth to develop
the skills, knowledge, ethical frameworks, and self-confidence needed to be full participants in
contemporary culture. (2009, p 8). Aspects of participatory culture that would benefit this project as
well as the participants in this project are the affiliations with other like-minded people in the
community and across the world, the opportunity for expression of creative ideas, the collaborative
problem-solving in which people can work as a team to solve real world problems and the
circulations that are accessible in online communities. (Jenkins, 2009). As Jenkins points out, We
are moving away from a world in which some produce and many consume media, toward one in
which everyone has a more active stake in the culture that is produced. (2009, p. 10) This is the kind
of empowerment I would like to create with my web presence for youth. There are youth who have
traveled with me for two years and plan to continue for time to come. Youth are looking for ways to
create their own experiences and have an influence on the world in meaningful ways. As Burbules &
Callister note, "We want to question the centrality of 'information' as a way of characterizing these
new technologies for education... An instrumental view (of technology) externalizes technologies,
views them as fixed objects with a use and purpose." (2000). Using technology, not only as an

instrument or tool, but in this type of relationship model, will allow youth to influence what is
produced as well as to learn and grow in the experience. (Burbules, 2000) In this online community,
there will be opportunities for interest based activities as well as deep participatory learning (Parker,
voicethread). As Burbules discussed, All new technologies change people's understandings of what
they can do, what they want to do, what they think they need to do." (2000, p. 7). The participatory
nature of online communities allow for this type of community learning, this place for affirmation,
solidarity and critique. (Nieto, 2004). As Parker says, At its best, school should give students a
sense of their membership in society, of their right to be actors in history, to have agency and power
in the world and to live fulfilled and purposeful lives (2010, p. 4). Instead a web presence that
allows for interaction and engagement allows for a relationship model of technology and allows
opportunities for youth and other interested parties to move from simple consumers of information to
prosumers, or producers and consumers of information. This voice allows for authorship and deep
participatory learning (Parker, 2010). I understand the value of what a participatory culture in my
project will create for youth, however I am still not sure the best way to establish that interactive
community. As part of my project, I will learn the mechanics of setting up a participatory culture.
The Timeline
Beginning of February

Read research about the transformative nature of travel

Read additional research about critical race theory

End of February

Collect:
o

Photos of students participating in transformative travel experiences,

videos of students and teachers who have participated and

testimonials about the power of our past trips.

Determine initial bilingual components of web presence.

Select platform based on cost, interactivity, accessibility, authorship.

Research participatory component.

End of March

Update literature review to frame as an argument for the web project

Develop web presence.

Mid April

Present project to committee for GSO 2.

Preliminary Literature Review

The profound importance of relationship and narrative became powerfully obvious in many of the
sessions that I attended at the National Association of Multicultural Educators conference in 2013. In
our session about the transformative nature of travel, two young travel participants spoke about the
impact of the relationships they developed on our trip. They spoke about the lessons they learned
about slowing down and appreciating time to connect with others. They talked of the stories they
learned about the war and how meaningful it was learning the history from people who lived those
experiences rather than from reading a book. They were moved by the joy experienced in the daily
lives of people who earned less than seven dollars a day. (McAtee, 2013). Freire writes in Pedagogy
of the oppressed, Founding itself upon love, humility, and faith, dialogue becomes a horizontal
relationship of which mutual trust between the dialoguers is the logical consequence. (2013, p.159).
This is the same relationship that Peggy McIntosh refers to in her phase four curriculum. (2013). As
youth develop relationships with students and community members in other countries and listen to
their stories, it allows for a sharing of differences and therefore allows them to move from the phase
one curricular experience of oppressor and oppressed toward a phase four type experience of
building relationships and a better understanding of the need for social justice. (McIntosh, 2013)

My three children went down for their fourth trip this summer. The trips to El Salvador have become
a part of the way they define themselves, a part of their identity. Connected learning is realized
when a young person is able to pursue a personal interest or passion with the support of friends and
caring adults, and is in turn able to link this learning and interest to academic achievement, career
success or civic engagement. (Ito et all, 2013, p. 4). When my daughter was twelve on our second
trip, we watched a documentary about Rufina Amaya, the sole survivor who escaped from of the El
Mozote massacre in 1981. Listening to her tell her story of hiding in the trees watching her husbands
decapitation, the shooting of her nine year old son as he called out for his mother and the murder of
her three girls ages 5, 3, and 8 months, the room full of Californian youth was totally silent except for
the sounds of sniffling. Our Salvadoran group leader, Alvaro, was a good friend of Rufina Amaya,
having traveled with her to the USA when she spoke to the commission on the Truth for El Salvador.
As the movie ended, the group sat in complete silence. It was almost difficult to breath, the silence
was so dense. The pain of her story had paralyzed the entire group for minutes. Finally, my daughter,
Jessica, got up, walked over and gave Alvaro a hug. She held him and he held her while she sobbed
and he cried. The healing that happens in listening to the stories, caring, and sharing some of the pain
is almost visible. They held each other and cried for a long time. There was so much communicated
during those moments without words. Solidarity with the other is the radical postmodern position
to overcome nihilism and polemicism. (Slattery, 2006, p. 4). This kind of restorative justice is a
relationship growing experience that both heals and facilitates growth. Counts writes about education
as a means to correct injustices. (2013). This is one of those experiences. As we shared our stories
about connections with the people of El Salvador during the last workshop of the three-day
conference, I was reminded once again of the power of relationship and narrative in social justice.
Freire writes, True dialogue cannot exist unless the dialoguers engage in critical thinking- thinking
which discerns an indivisible solidarity between the world and the men and admits no dichotomy
between them- thinking which perceives reality as process, as transformation, rather than as a static

entity- thinking which does not separate itself from action, but constantly immerses itself in
temporality without fear of the risks involved. (2013, p. 159).

I am hopeful about what postmodern writers call a paradigm-shift because humanity is moving to
a new zone of cognition with an expanded concept of self in relation. (Slattery, 2006, p. 19). This is
the kind of shift that is developed with Transformative Travel experiences. If social justice is the
main focus of my life inside and outside of education, then I need to develop trusting, honest
relationship with students and help them to expand their own view of themselves to one of self in
relation with others. Through the course of the Masters program, it has become all the more clear to
me that I believe passionately in the postmodern worldview because it seeks to transcend the
ravages of modernity with radically new concepts of society, culture, language, and power.
(Slattery, 2006, p. 20). Transformative travel experiences allow students to construct new
understandings of their world and of their own place in the world. For the truly humanist educator
and the authentic revolutionary, the object of action is the reality to be transformed by them together
with other men- not other men themselves. (Freire, 2013, p. 160). I also recognize a great
opportunity for growth in my own ability to create trust, honesty, risk, criticism and relationship with
youth. Helping youth to become open to be transformed with the people in the community as well as
allowing myself to become transformed is a goal of this type of travel.

As Slattery writes, The postmodern worldview allows educators to envision an alternative way out
of the turmoil of contemporary schooling, which too often is characterized by violence, bureaucratic
gridlock, curricular stagnation, depersonalized evaluation, political conflict, economic crisis,
decaying infrastructure, emotional fatigue, demoralization, and despair. (2006, p. 21). Evidence of
this crisis exists in classrooms, high schools, department meetings, across districts and throughout the
county. At the same time there is hope and possibility in a postmodern paradigm for curriculum

development and for educational experiences for youth especially when it is viewed as a cyclical
process where the past and the future inform and enrich the present rather than as a linear arrow
along which events can be isolated, analyzed and objectified. (Slattery, 2006, p.
22). Transformative travel provides one avenue for youth to experience a postmodern paradigm
during their educational career that will help them see their educational experience through a
different lens.

We should give our children a vision of the possibilities which lie ahead and endeavor to enlist their
loyalties and enthusiasm in the realization of the vision. Also our social institutions and practices, all
of them, should be critically examined in the light of such a vision. (Counts, 2013, p. 48). Since my
first semester in the MA program in 2000 and even before that in the credential program and the
Chicano Latino Studies program at Sonoma State University, I have wanted to create a classroom
community of affirmation, solidarity and critique. I have wanted to participate in a postmodern
educational community like those of the theorists and authors I have read and dreamt about
throughout my own education, however it always seemed impossible in the assembly line model of
education in my community, our county and state. However travel allows my students, my children
and me to step off the assembly line and experience critical social justice education in a way that is
not possible in our current educational system. Travel allows youth and adults to reflect on the
curriculum, practices, believes and systems that influence their lives. The ability to see our
institutions and practices from the outside allows youth to become critical consumers of the
information they are presented and the institutions in which they live every day. It allows them to
jump out of the fishbowl and examine the surroundings of their daily lives in a much deeper way
than possible from inside of the fishbowl. At our presentation at the NAME conference in November
of 2014 my son and daughter presented this time. My twelve year old son said, I watched a video
about Desmond Tutu at the conference yesterday. I was really surprised that I have never heard about

Desmond Tutu. He did great things and had a big impact on social justice. Why havent I heard of
him before? I also noticed that in that movie, the racist leaders were calling the people who were
demanding rights, Guerillas. That was the same thing they called the people of El Salvador!
(McAtee, 2014) For boy in sixth grade to be able to reflect critically on the kind of education he is
receiving in school and the biased perspective presented by the press, there must have been
transformational experiences for him on those trips. He would not be able to critically examine these
things if he had not stepped outside of the traditional, assembly line, transmission based curriculum
that he experiences in his school. Learners must actively construct their own understandings rather
than simply absorb what others tell them. (Bransford et al., 2000) Unless students connect new
learning to what they already understand, believe, and know how to do, they are likely neither to
remember the new information nor be able to apply it to new contexts. (Wiske, 2006, p. 4). As more
students have opportunities to experience other cultures, beliefs, worldviews, they are able to create
for themselves a vision for what is possible for themselves, their communities and the world. They
are able to see themselves as part of a relationship with people from other parts of the world instead
of an isolated individual. They are able to see the value and need for social justice and they are
inclined to act in ways to make social justice a reality.

Also at the NAME conference in Tucson we attended a workshop entitled, Travel for transformation:
Reifying privilege or dismantling fronteras? Participants discussed aspect of travel that reproduce
and create privilege and reinforce aspects of power as well as other aspects of travel that truly are
transformative. (Gambrell & Bright, 2014). I have struggled in the past reflecting on aspects of our
travel that are transformative as well as other aspects that are not transformative. I hope that the
future readings I have chosen as well as the participatory aspect of my web presence will help me to
reflect, learn and create travel experiences in with transformation happens, for both the traveler as
well as the community. I want to ensure that our travel is of the type that dismantles fronteras!

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