Three Reasons To Visit Rome

For anyone wanting to focus on visiting one city abroad, especially teachers looking to take students to Europe, there are not many major cities have the historical richness and allure of Rome. As one of the most expansive empires the world has ever seen, Rome used to have one of the mightiest empires and still shows it’s uniqueness through its history and modern-day beauty.

Here are three reasons why you have to visit Rome:

Visit the Source of Art, Architecture & Film

Rome, Italy is an ideal destination for art, architecture, history, language, and film lovers. The entire city center is a UNESCO world heritage site, making it an incredible location to begin your educational journey.

Through our custom programs, all our teachers and students explore ancient architecture at the Roman Forum, Palatine Hill, or enter any of Rome’s 900 basilicas such as the Santa Maria Maggiore and witness world-class works of art for free. Walking through Piazza Navona, there’s the Baroque sculptor Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s most impressive fountain, the Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi.

Located just 30 minutes outside of the historical center, Cinecitta Studios takes students through the rich history of Italian film. Benito Mussolini founded Cinecitta in 1937 and it has since transformed from a Fascist propaganda machine into Italy’s most prolific movie studio. Students can take a fascinating tour of legendary movie sets and backlots, walk through an interactive museum, and see for themselves why Italy is home to some of the most talented filmmakers in the world.

In fact, in the past, we’ve given our high school teachers and students the opportunity to experience some of the above mentioned sites in The Eternal City. Facilitated by our local EdOdyssey educator, Rachel, this week-long custom program allowed students to fully immerse themselves in Italian history, culinary arts, and architecture.

Accessibility

Rome is an incredibly visitor-friendly city. The majority of historically significant sites are in the city center, which is walkable area full of impressive architecture.

Without even trying, visitors are guaranteed to stumble upon incredible sites while walking down the city’s cobblestone streets. For those that prefer public transport, the city is well connected by buses and trams, and the underground metro.

The city overflows with people, restaurants, and churches. With all of the options of culinary, cultural, and historical attractions, there’s never have a dull moment.

Aside from historical buildings and museums, Rome presents a variety of beautiful parks such as the Villa Borghese Gardens and Villa Doria Pamphili. Students can take part in the Italian pastime of la passeggiata, or evening stroll in one of these gorgeous locations. As a part of our programs, we also like to incorporate scavenger hunts that allow students and teachers to interact with their surroundings to seek out and understand the rich history that surrounds them.

Balance of Indoor & Outdoor Beauty

Both teachers and students visiting Rome can enjoy some of the classic Roman points of interests and we also like to also add and give a more local touch for our academic programs. We like to custom the programs to seek a balance the history with famous Roman historical buildings with local spots as well.

Aside from just museums and galleries, Rome presents a variety of markets and beautiful parks such as the Villa Borghese Gardens and Villa Doria Pamphili. You can watch a spectacular sunset from the top of Gianicolo Hill. Students can take part in the Italian pastime of la passeggiata, or evening stroll in one of these gorgeous locations. As a part of our programs, we also like to incorporate scavenger hunts that allow students and teachers to interact with their environment to understand the rich history that surrounds them.

By Western European standards, Rome’s mix of nature beauty and major landmarks make it even more enjoyable to visit and study. If you’re a teacher looking to create a custom program, EdOdyssey looks to include as many costs to avoid surprises. When we can include expenses, such as food, travel, and activities with an EdOdyssey educator, you’re given more of an opportunity to enjoy and focus on the history, architecture, and everything that cities like Rome have to offer you.

Would you like to organize a custom program experience for your school? Visit our custom programs page and send us your trip preferences to get the ball rolling!

Four Major Benefits Of Customizable Programs

Plan, Prep and Go Abroad With EdOdyssey

Wouldn’t you like to go abroad with other teachers and students without the stress of handling the logistics of the whole journey yourself? Would you like to be able lay the foundation for a unique, fun program but let travel experts and fellow educators work out the logistics work for you?

We’re here to help!

Our customizable group programs abroad allow educators and their administrations to give us the tools to develop enriching, educationally-focused programs. As former teachers with years of classroom experience, our team knows how to involve school leaders from the beginning in develop meaningful, international programs for students. Our team helps define the wide and specific scopes of learning objectives for the program so your program can incorporate your content area(s) and theme(s) are reflected in the itinerary.

Below are our four major reasons why students and teachers should customizing a program abroad!

1. Flexible Planning

From the start, we’re able to create an itinerary that fits the mission of your program within your timeframe. For staters, we ask teachers and administration about the length of their desired program, specific/tentative dates, learning objectives and destination of travel for us to lay a base travel itinerary to start incorporating activities and later work out the logistics. Our extensive knowledge of Peru, China, Spain, and Italy help us plan and prepare individualized programs for schools with academic requirements in mind.

Our programs are designed similarly to a curriculum that allows students to learn across a wide range of activities. In the past, we’ve included cultural experiences involving local communities through homestays and volunteer service days. We also incorporate student-driven, educator-guided experiences abroad that include famous points of interest and scavenger hunts in them to add that special element of experiential learning.

We know how to adjust to your academic needs because we know that you want the best suited activities for the mission of your program, and we know that you’re trying to reach a wide range of students with their various strengths!

2. Differentiated Student Activities

In the classroom, we know that great teachers adjust their instruction to meet the needs of their students, and we want our programs to cater to the students as well. We make sure to differentiate our student activities to match with the scope and mission of the program.

After every program, we receive great feedback from our group programs and we’re luckily able to use it the next year since the high majority of our schools repeat with us. In over our years of providing custom study abroad programs, we’ve travelled with students from all around the US and we’ve all collectively travelled 932,994 miles and counting!

We’ve had hundreds of students go through our past programs and more than 13,450 hours in the classroom with all of our groups combined internationally over the years! Not to mention, we’ve also collaborated with schools from foreign countries and hosted them in Massachusetts!

3. Affordability - Your Program, Your Inclusions

Our core program includes the essentials such as your housing, your transportation, your flights, most of your meals, 24/7 staff, your pre-departure support, and your travel/medical insurance during the duration of your trip with us.

Some fun additions that groups have enjoyed with past groups have been language classes, museum visits, cooking classes, volunteer/service and so much more. We try to include as many culturally-enriching activities to give you the best idea of what we provide you with during your trip!

You’ll want to bring some spending money for souvenirs and snacks! Otherwise, we try to include as much as possible with our school trips!

If you have something that you would like us to consider during your trip, we want to hear it because ultimately we want what is best for our groups. We go through and create a step-by-step guide for each group that communicates a clear roadmap of how we are preparing you for your trip abroad.

4. Increasing Student Participation & Satisfaction

Based on our past travel experiences, we know how to create a holistic, cultural experience abroad that makes you realize how much you’ve learned in such a short amount of time. We understand the beauty of teachable moments and we coach the students as they go on their journey.

For example, at the end of each day, we lead a group reflection to help students share, process and understand the takeaways from each day’s activities. Through the duration of the trip, students receive cultural coaching from us because we know that it’s important for them to have social context from experts who know the nuances and pitfalls of experiencing a new culture.

As we’ve collaborated with a variety of schools from around the world, we understand that each school and all students have their respective needs, budgets and objectives. Our ultimate goal is that we want to make it work for you because we believe that travel changes people and people change the world .

Are you ready to take that first step and start planning your next trip? Not sure about your financial plan for the trip yet?

For more information about our financing opportunities, check out money matters page so we can help help your students get on their way!

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