A wise man once said: “Travel teaches tolerance.”     

That man was Benjamin Disraeli, an author and politician who twice
served as England’s prime minister in the 1800s. Even though Disraeli uttered these words a long time ago, they have become the guiding principal behind Global Roam ink.™ Travel can teach tolerance, but it can also teach courage, empathy, awareness and geography.

Tolerance. Courage. Empathy. Awareness. Geography. Today’s children need all of these attributes and skills if they are to succeed in tomorrow’s global marketplace. Sadly, the distance between cultures and countries sometimes feels like it’s growing, not shrinking. Ignorance and misperceptions keep us far apart.

Unfortunately, America’s students rank poorly in terms of their knowledge and understanding of world geography and politics. In 2006, the National Geographic Education Foundation conducted a geography literacy poll with Roper Public Affairs. The survey questioned Americans between 18 and 24 years of age about global issues and mapping skills.  

According to poll results, only 50 percent could identify New York on a map. Furthermore, 88 percent could not find Afghanistan. A bright spot among the findings, however, was that the young people who had traveled internationally had a stronger grasp of world geography than others.  
                       
With that in mind, Global Roam ink.™ strives to bring real people with real travel adventures into American classrooms. The interviews, essays and reviews found on its pages are designed to spark an interest in far-flung places, cultivate empathy for others, and encourage travel, not as an escape, but as a transforming, educational experience.

Because Global Roam ink.™ was created for use in middle school and high school geography classrooms, it publishes lesson plans to accompany its monthly articles.

Yet really, the site is for anyone with a healthy dose of wanderlust.

Globie is the host and guide of Global Roam ink.™ He’s an outgoing and jovial soul who’s never met a country he didn’t like. His travels have taken him from the dunes of the Atacama to the peaks of Tibet and everywhere in between. He can count to ten, say hello and ask, ‘Where’s the bathroom?’ in 26 different tongues, including Urdu, Igbo and Czech.

Kelly Westhoff is the creator and editor of Global Roam ink.™ She was bitten by the travel bug at the age of 20 during a semester abroad in Spain. She has taught English in Buenos Aires, studied creative writing in Prague and backpacked throughout Latin America and Southeast Asia. When she wasn’t traveling, she was teaching
in the public school system.

As an eighth-grade world geography teacher, Kelly was often frustrated. Her geography text book was hopelessly dull. It was heavy and filled with boring language words. Whenever she assigned an activity from its pages, her students groaned. The text book and its accompanying guides, charts, transparencies and worksheets were nearly incapable of imparting any lasting enthusiasm for the world.

Kelly left public education to pursue a career as a freelance writer, yet she could never shake teaching altogether. For several years, she taught composition classes at a technical college. And she never stopped wishing that there were an accessable resource to help students imagine the world beyond the classroom, tap their interest in other countries, and even encourage them to conceive their own travel dreams. With these things in mind, she started Global Roam ink.™

Michelle Sale is the education editor at Global Roam ink.™ She considers herself a perpetual student of Spanish and has taken courses in Peru, Ecuador and Guatemala. To supplement her language learning, she lived with local families during her studies abroad and has survived the butchering of a cow and an earthquake.

Wanderlust claimed Michelle while she was backpacking through Europe at the age of 21. Since then, she hasn’t stop scheming of ways to travel. She met Kelly along the Inca Trail, chaperoned a student trip to Korea and later took a solo trip to Thailand, leaving her husband and 8-month old son at home.

Michelle worked as an editorial assistant at Disney Adventures, an edutainment magazine. Later, she earned her teaching degree and taught social studies and language arts in New York City. Upon leaving the classroom, Michelle returned to the writing world. She produces lesson plans for The New York Times’ Learning Network and is a freelance writer. Michelle hopes to inspire students to travel and learn from all the world has to offer.

Shannon Keough is a writer for Global Roam ink.™ Her keen eye also provides all-around editorial support. She has worked as a copy editor, freelance writer and assistant editor at a trade magazine. Currently she writes for a communications consulting firm. Shannon and Kelly met at the Loft, an organization that supports the literary arts.

Shannon fell hard for the road during a study-abroad stint in Berlin. While the other students in her program were attending class, she spent her time riding the U-Bahn and S-Bahn (the subway) to unknown parts of the city and exploring new neighborhoods. Ever since then, she has been fascinated with public transit.  

After traveling through Italy, Poland, Austria, Croatia and Bosnia, Shannon is plotting a future trip to Indonesia. But first, she plans to bike along California’s Pacific Coast. Shannon is one mean, road biking machine.

Nick Adducci is a graphic design and animation artist for Global Roam ink.™  He is the creative force behind the Globie character.

He grew up accompanying his grandfather on hunting and fishing trips. He’s fished for salmon in the waters of Alaska and tracked feral goats in Texas, whitetail deer in North Dakota and wild goose in Saskatchewan.

Nick is also somewhat of a martial arts aficionado, with a handful of titles in tae kwon doe, hapkido and kumdo to his name. He traveled to Seoul to study with Grandmasters in each of these styles, as all three originated in Korea. While there, he was impressed with the cleanliness of the city. “There was almost no graffiti, the sidewalks had very little, if any, gum on them and I couldn’t find a single cigarette butt in the subway,” he remarked. “There was even weightlifting equipment—like what you find in the YMCA—for public use in the parks near my hotel, which I made use of.” 

Jason Gadd is the man behind the web of pages and links that is Global Roam ink.™ His freelance web site development business, NexGen Associates, works with small businesses and nonprofit organizations.

Even though Jason grew up in central South Dakota on a working cattle ranch, his small town roots haven’t kept him from seeing the world. He has traveled extensively across the United States, Canada, England and Mexico.

Mexico has called to Jason more than once. Of course it helps that he has family living there. Yet Jason also likes traveling with a local eye as his guide, for it gives him insights into the surrounding history and folklore that he’d never otherwise learn. His top Mexican spots? The pyramids of Teotihuacan and the old silver mining town of Taxco.

Most recently, however, Jason traveled back to his roots. He attended the Buffalo Roundup in South Dakota’s Custer State Park and watched as 1,400 stampeding buffalo were herded through corrals by cowboys on horseback.

One of these days—sooner rather than later, he hopes—Jason will retire and finally be able to pick up and travel whenever the mood strikes