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Woodlands Academy launches its Global Odyssey

After taking this year's final exams, all Woodlands Academy of the Sacred Heart students went on a weeklong Global Odyssey.

The launch of the Lake Forest school's newest Global Education offering sent 10 sophomores on exchange visits to sister schools in Austria, Chile, France, Mexico and Spain. Another 30 Woodlands Academy students departed for Japan, where they visited a Sacred Heart network school in Tokyo and took in the sights of Tokyo, Hakone, Takayama and Kyoto.

Fourteen more visited Ecuador for a service trip to help a local indigenous community in Chilcapamba in a variety of ways.

"Our main focus was the potable water project," said Spanish teacher Katherine Stewart, one of two Woodlands faculty members accompanying students to Ecuador.

"We spent time cleaning the reservoir where they get their drinking water and cleaning the area around the cistern where extra water is stored. Other projects included sowing native plants and harvesting corn."

In addition to the service projects, the Woodlands Academy students learned about the uses of medicinal plants and how the community remains self-sufficient using different farming techniques, and enjoyed Spanish lessons and salsa dancing during their time in Ecuador.

They described their journey to a land where many girls have to walk long distances for clean water as both eye-opening and rewarding.

"We take clean water in our homes for granted," sophomore Jadah Auguste of Gurnee said. "Our help on this water supply project means girls there can go to school rather than walking for water."

Junior Lali Ochoa of Waukegan added that those who went to Ecuador returned home having learned a lot of meaningful lessons about a very different way of life from those with whom they interacted during their visit, as well as what they saw there.

Woodlands Academy students not traveling abroad participated in a variety of alternative Global Odyssey classes and service projects both on and off the campus of the all-girls college-preparatory high school.

These activities, allowing students to deep-dive into a single topic for an engaging four days, included visits to Feed My Starving Children in Libertyville, Middle Fork Savannah in Lake Forest and Working Bikes in Chicago, plus such area landmarks as the Adler Planetarium, Art Institute, Baha'i Temple and Northwestern University.

For example, members of the Space Exploration class spent time using what they had learned to design colonies on Mars. And after exploring the various contributing factors to the problems they help lend service to - hunger, homelessness, domestic violence and environmental impacts - students in the Volunteer to Make a Difference class broke into pairs and brainstormed solutions to combat these problems of global significance.

"The Global Odyssey program provides every Woodlands Academy student with an international experience, either immersive or through a special class, in order to spark her global curiosity and develop her global competence," Director of Global Education Amy Perlick said.

"It's the latest way that we seek to empower girls to change the world. We had students on four continents during our first Global Odyssey, but also students going around the world and the universe through a variety of compelling classes on campus."

The lessons learned from each Global Odyssey experience, whether at home or abroad, were shared with the entire Woodlands Academy community during an assembly the final week of school. Participants gathered the day before in their individual groups to process their experiences, reflect on everything they'd learned, and then decide how to convey this to the rest of the school.

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