Joey Gives the Opportunity to Travel the World to Students

ASPEN — Joseph Dziedzic is getting ready to travel to Spain this summer with students and is already planning trips until 2020. The Spain trip will be leaving June 12 and coming back June 22. Each trip is expected to give the students a unique perspective on the world and give them the opportunity to learn new information about cultures as well as the native people.

Dziedzic is a Spanish teacher at Aspen High School and has decided to start traveling with students around the world. When talking about what inspired him to do this trip, he said, “Just being able to take kids out into the real world and see life as it is in a different culture and trying to apply what we are learning in class in real life. I know I have learned a ton through traveling, so it’s nice for them to have that opportunity as well.”

The Spain trip will be chaperoned by Dziedzic, his wife, and Kate Korn, as well as a Spanish leader. There can be up to 50 people going on these trips, but Dziedzic might do smaller trips in the future where it is just our school so it can be more individual and private. These trips are open to all the AHS students and Dziedzic encourages anyone that wants to go, to go.

Future trips are not planned officially, but tentatively. The meeting about these trips will be at the beginning of the next school year to talk about what to expect for the next few summers.

“I think the following summer, so 2018, we’re going to do England, Scotland, Ireland area,” Dziedzic said. “2019, it’d be nice to go back and do Germany, Prague area. And then the following [year] we would go back down and do Spain, possibly France and Italy as well.”

Dziedzic hopes students will embrace the experience of travel, different cultures, and different people. He also hopes student will apply what they are learning in class into their trip as well as use the language they have learned. His main hope is that students take in the world around him and see the world in a different perspective.

“It’s cool when I was in Germany on the training,” Dziedzic said. “It was so amazing to see where the Berlin Wall was and parts of the Berlin Wall and where the headquarters were for Germany in World War II. Just being able to actually be there and see where it is and what it’s like and how it has changed is incredible. It’s a cool experience. So I hope that students and their families can take a look at what we are doing in the future, and plan out/figure out a way for all students to be able to travel and see these things. It’s an amazing experience.”

A main part of his experience in Germany was also getting up and doing things. Dziedzic said that when they went on tours, he did not just snap a photo and be done with the site they were visiting, he walked around and got the full experience. His trips will be full of new experiences, where the students on the trip are encouraged to try new things and submerse themselves into the culture.