Safety is our top priority

Health & Safety

Safety is top priority. The Traveling School recognizes it is a privilege to travel with and care for your children. Our school also acknowledges that risk is all around us, in everyday life, and our goals are to assess situations and make informed decisions to minimize risk.

The essence of The Traveling School includes leaning into risk and stretching comfort zones while building diverse skills to find personal growth, new confidence, and empowerment. Our 20+ years of experience equates to 40 semesters, meaning we have 4,200+ experiential days under our belts. The Traveling School’s positive track record demonstrates our proactive approach, dedication to risk management, and consistent staff and faculty training. All of this minimizes risk while expanding the next generation of leaders.

Safety and risk management considerations are a priority in programming. TTS’s risk management philosophy includes several key components: carefully planned itineraries, trained faculty and staff, informed students, contingency planning, and risk management practices and protocols.

The focus of our risk management strategy is threefold:

1. Create a culture of risk management and safety with our staff, faculty, and students through education, training, and information dissemination.

• Faculty:
  • Hold certification in Wilderness First Aid, Wilderness First Responder, or higher medical training, as well as CPR.
  • Undergo background checks.
  • Complete comprehensive pre-semester training focused on: program components and group management, decision making and judgment, and Traveling School policies, practices and protocols.
• Students:
  • Learn how to adapt behavior, recognize and manage risks, and develop awareness to potentially minimize dangerous situations.
  • Share in the responsibility for – and consideration of – their own safety and well-being, as well as that of other students and teachers.
  • Become risk assessors and are expected to act appropriately.

2. Continually improve our risk management and safety support systems of information gathering, communication, contingency plans, training, and internal reviews.

• An administrator from the Home Office is always on-call during a semester. Parents, teachers, and students have this phone number.
• Complete risk assessments for each semester itinerary to stay informed and monitor situations. TTS remains flexible and adjusts itineraries when necessary.
• Partner with a medical & security advisory team for additional program support, expert advice, and emergency services.
• Contingency plan for small and large scale situations.
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3. Foster excellent relationships in the communities where we travel.

• Our in-country partners are essential to our school. They maintain an on-the-ground perspective that helps us achieve our programming goals with our health, safety, and well-being as their top priority.

General Health Management

The Traveling School is one-of-a-kind. There is no consistent campus, classroom, living space, or cafeteria, and often there are no walls or buildings of any kind. These various settings necessitate focus on individual health for overall group health and well-being. Students learn proactive self-care techniques alongside group health and safety considerations.

Vaccine Requirements & Recommendations

The Traveling School requires each student to be up-to-date with the required travel vaccines for the countries on their semester itinerary. These vaccinations can be found on the Center for Disease Control website. Each country sets their own entry and exit requirements for international visitors, and as we have seen since the Covid-19 pandemic, country regulations may change from time to time.

Additionally, because we travel through areas where access to health care may be limited, we require students to have up to date tetanus vaccines. Beyond this, we encourage students to be up-to-date on routine vaccinations as outlined on the Center for Disease Control’s Immunization Schedule.

We strongly recommend all students and teachers be fully vaccinated prior to the semester. A semester with 100% of teachers and students fully vaccinated increases everyone’s chance of staying healthy and minimizes the potential for major programmatic shifts due to individual or group illness.

Once enrolled in a Traveling School semester, we recommend scheduling an appointment with a licensed medical professional such as a travel doctor to discuss required and recommended vaccines for your semester region.

Route Planning & Flexible Mindset

Our school must think and plan up to a year in advance; we must make intentional and cautious decisions as we contemplate a semester moving through different communities and regions. This means we begin assessing program feasibility for the following year’s semester itineraries every summer, continue to assess throughout program implementation, and remain mindful of our impact in the areas where we travel and interact. Although our routes and regions are planned ahead of time, we are able to adapt and adjust itineraries whenever necessary.

To make informed decisions, we collaborate and evaluate information from peer organizations, in-country partners, and various sources, including the U.S. State Department, Global Rescue, Cornerstone Safety Group, risk management advisory committees, as well as local and international news.

Our flexible itineraries are intentional. While we provide a week-by-week overview, we do not share the day-to-day planning. This allows our faculty and staff to make dynamic decisions, adjusting to changes based on opportunity and risk. A group may stay longer in one location to participate in a community event, or we may reroute due to unforeseen political or environmental changes. Our team develops contingency plans and can adjust quickly as needed throughout a semester.