Between June 18th and July 4th, 2020, Arrowhead students will have the opportunity to travel to Scandinavia. The trip will last for nine days and the students will explore three different countries.

This trip is offered through the social studies classes at Arrowhead. It is open to all students currently in grade 9, 10, and 11.

The locations include Oslo, Norway, Copenhagen, Denmark, and Stockholm, Sweden. The first mandatory meeting was on Wednesday, May 29th at 6pm in the junior study hall.

Shanna Hechimovich, a social studies teacher at Arrowhead, is in charge of planning the trip.

Hechimovich said, “I wanted to pick a place that was culturally unique and also a place that Arrowhead had not yet traveled to before.  I also prefer giving students an opportunity to travel to countries that are not the typical tourist destinations. I had narrowed it down to Eastern Europe and Scandinavia and [social studies teacher Chris] Herriot did an informal poll in his classes to see which area students would rather travel to and overwhelmingly the response was Scandinavia.”  

While the Arrowhead social studies department has been to several different countries, this trip will be the first to Scandinavia.

Hechimovich has gone with the Spanish classes to Peru, Guatemala, and Belize. She’s gone to France with the French classes and with the Social Studies classes to Ecuador and Tanzania.  

Hechimovich says, “This is a really unique and affordable opportunity to travel to three different countries while also going someplace that is not a typical tourist destination.  There is a lot of really interesting history there with 800-year-old castles and churches and, of course, the fjords and Viking history! They have unique cultures, different from other parts of Europe, and they say that Scandinavians are some of the happiest people in the world so why not go see why that is! Regardless of if students choose this tour or a different tour offered through Arrowhead, I think all students should travel internationally if they have the ability to do so as global travel fosters empathy, cultural sensitivity/awareness, perspective, independence, and global/social responsibility.  You can’t go wrong with the world as your classroom!”