Global Experiences Take Seawolves Around the World

A contingent of Tabor Academy students took off to locations around the world over Spring Break as part of the school’s Global Education programming. Seawolves traveled with Tabor faculty to: a coral reef restoration program in San Salvador, The Bahamas; intercultural exchange programs in Copenhagen, Denmark and Beijing, China; and a local-global program set across three islands in the Azores, the autonomous region of Portugal.  

Tabor’s Global Education program emphasizes a sense of place: Students are sent to far-flung locales that have a connection to the culture, history, and geography found at home in areas closer to Marion. This, Director of Global Education and Spanish Teacher Jonathan Sirois explains, gives students context, and the ability to appreciate, learn from, and synthesize the lessons they learn abroad even once they return to campus. 

A Local-Global Experience 

The program in the Azores, Sirois points out, is a perfect example of this structured “local-global” educational experience. “Tabor is a school on the SouthCoast of Massachusetts with lots of touchpoints to cultures that surround us,” he says. The Azores program is an extension of a ninth-grade program that focuses on exploring the area around Marion, and especially the effect the Portuguese diaspora has had on the region. Students in the ninth-grade program explore the New Bedford Whaling Museum, learn about the whaling and textile industries that formed the backbone of the area’s economy and cultural identity, and explore how those systems evolved into the modern fishing industry.  

After experiencing this ninth-grade program, some students went one step further and joined other Seawolves on a global experience. The group spent nine days in the Azores focusing on three ideas. First, students looked at migration between the Azores and the SouthCoast of Massachusetts, and the Azorean connection to New Bedford and Fall River, Massachusetts.  

Second, they went on a whale watch as a focus on ocean conservation (the Azores is home to blue whales and sperm whales, and is one of the most diverse marine environments on Earth). Sirois explains that students connect the experience back to their exploration of the whaling industry in Massachusetts. “Instead of contributing to the decline of whales, though,” he says, “both communities are very mindful of the need for stewardship of the ocean and protecting whales.”  

Third, the group focused on the idea of drawing innovation from a fragile landscape. The Azores, Sirois notes, prides itself on being one of the world’s most sustainable tourist destinations. “They’re trying to reconcile the need to stay green and sustainable with the need to welcome tourists,” he says. The group met with an environmental scientist who studies that challenge. “We talked a lot about being responsible tourists and stewards of the land,” he says. “What can we do in our everyday lives that would contribute to that protection?” 

Sirois believes that the most impactful learning happens in the reflection after the experience. “Students can do visceral, powerful learning on the ground,” he says. “That can be elevated tremendously with the proper training beforehand and opportunities to reflect afterwards. This year, all participants in the March travel programs presented artifacts of their learning to their peers. At this special Saturday session, students used the programs’ learning objectives as a lens to highlight connections between our place—our small corner of the SouthCoast—and the broader world.” 

School by the Sea Lessons Around the World 

Another group of students traveled to San Salvador, an island in the Bahamas, through Tabor’s Research Environmental Education Focus (R.E.E.F.) program. The group helped with coral reef restoration efforts at the Gerace Research Centre, which is associated with the University of the Bahamas. The R.E.E.F. program is a longstanding opportunity at Tabor: Students help replenish coral reefs off the northern shoreline of San Salvador Island by creating fragment coral reef stands to help propagate healthy coral reef specimens.  

“It’s very much a School by the Sea^® opportunity,” Sirois says. “It promotes this idea that the ocean is for everyone and it’s everyone's responsibility to steward it. We do our small part to contribute to the restoration of the coral reef; a small contribution to what has to be a huge, sustained effort. We practice awareness and knowledge and the mindset we want our students to take with them into the world.” 

Students who traveled to Rysensteen, Tabor’s partner school in Copenhagen, engaged in cultural exchange with their peers in class and through home stays. They also focused on architectural design and aesthetics and explored the ways in which Copenhagen has become and maintained itself as a sustainable, green city through its commitment to urban design and alternative energy sources. And, those students also got to take a close-up view of Denmark’s outsized role in the global shipping industry by examining Maersk, the shipping company. Sirois notes that Maersk is both the largest contributor to Denmark’s GDP and its largest emitter of carbon. Students learn about the sustainability initiatives Maersk has committed to. 

Chloe Fox ’26, who traveled to Denmark, says that staying with a host family “was one of the most eye-opening experiences of my life. Seeing Denmark through the lens of an ‘everyday teenager’ revealed both similarities and differences compared to life in the United States,” she says. “I think that every student should take advantage of the amazing Travel opportunities Tabor offers at least once throughout their time here.”  

When students return from their travel programs, Sirois says, he hopes they understand “that the world is huge and different and inspiring, and also really small.”  

“These are a bunch of high school students from Marion,” Sirois says. “Are we going to solve all of these problems? Probably not, or at least not today. Can we be involved in an iterative process and explore some possibilities? What a great opportunity to start thinking about real-world issues. We're trying to map out the global challenges that students today are going to inherit and put them in situations where they can have real conversations about what it means to seek solutions or begin to design strategies to address them in a meaningful way.”