Zaera Beltran
Kate Bartels shares her story about her travels and how it opened her mind.
Traveling around the world can be an amazing thing, and can hold more than its fair share of discoveries and mind-opening sights. Exemplifying the importance of travel is an English teacher Kate Bartels from Mission Hills High School, who, during her college years, went on an Archeology trip that opened her eyes to the world and what’s beyond the U.S. She explains just how this trip and the experience of the world beyond what she grew up with changed her as a person.
“I had seen the movie… Raiders of the Lost Ark, probably most kids have heard of that… and it really impacted me, and so I asked my parents; they had this tiny little wedding fund for me and I asked if I could use the wedding fund money to instead go on this archeological dig, which was all summer… I ended up doing that for two summers. I think the reason that impacted me so much is it caused me to fall in love with the world, not just my own… people. My own tribe, my own family, my own friends, because in the Middle East, I got to have coffee by a meadow and campfire… I would sit side by side on a bus with Israeli soldiers with machine guns. I just got to see a different—an expanded—view of the world, and I felt really proud of myself,” said Bartels, English 10 H and English 12 teacher.