Savannah Overton's Dreams of Helping Students to Travel Abroad and Learn to Open Their Eyes Come
SAVANNAH OVERTON: Since I was in middle school I wanted to travel overseas. Since I was in high school I wanted to help students from disadvantaged backgrounds travel abroad. Since I was in college I wanted Black and African American students to have the chance to travel to Africa and around the world. I am so blessed to be a part of the DCPS Global Education Study Abroad program where hundreds of students every summer travel for FREE! It is the first program of it's kind. So much more to come, but here's an article on myself and on one of my amazing travelers, Que'Shawn! I'm so proud of him I could barely get through the article without crying!!
‘It opened my eyes to the world’: DCPS program organizes, funds summer trips abroad
Savannah Overton is the Director of Enrollment and Regional Partnerships at Duke Ellington School of the Arts in Georgetown, and she has been a travel ambassador since the program started. She traveled with high school students to Peru in 2016, Senegal in 2017 and Ecuador in 2018.
It has been a longtime dream of hers to organize a program that would facilitate trips for students who had never had the opportunity to go abroad — allowing them to experience something new and to put into practice lessons they’ve been learning in their classrooms.
“They’re studying Spanish, French or Chinese, and they’re exposed to it on paper, but they don’t necessarily have something tangible to hold onto because they haven’t been outside of their immediate community,” Overton said.
The experience of traveling abroad can be life-changing for students and their families. Overton described a student whose aunt drove up from North Carolina to watch the bus leave for the airport get on the bus to leave.
“What it means is not just the trip itself,” Overton said. “It’s the opportunity, the hope. It’s a door that’s going to open that in many cases, in many families and for many generations, has been closed.”
Research by George Washington University on the DCPS program bears this out. Laura Engel, associate professor of international education and international affairs, wrote in a March 2018 article for Education Week that students on the 2017 trips reported “increased confidence in making friends”; new enthusiasm for studying a world language; “enhanced feelings of gratitude and motivation for learning”; and newfound interest in “studying, traveling, or working abroad in the future.” What’s more, having a passport for the first time was a point of pride.
H.D. Wodson High senior Que’Shawn Spriggs traveled to Ecuador this summer with Overton. He’s described by his mother as an “introvert,” which worried her before he went on the trip.
The first few photos she received confirmed her fears, as he hid in the background of photos. However, by the fourth day, the pictures she received looked different. Que’Shawn was smiling and surrounding himself with a group of kids.
“He went from not wanting to talk to other people and being shy to reaching out to others, saying ‘Thank you’ every day, and trying new things. He even tried guinea pig,” said Overton. “Everything that we did, he was the first one to do it.”
