Student Travel Opportunities

Beyond offering many field trips within the Tampa Bay area, Berkeley offers longer and more immersive travel experiences that include excursions to other cities, states, and countries. These trips are intended to expand our students’ worldview, help them develop independence, and create lasting memories. The trips we offer are not simply tours, but educational journeys that families would not typically embark upon during a vacation.

Travel opportunities vary from year to year, and Berkeley offers many different types, including:

• Service: Some trips are service-focused, such as when students visit the Bahamas to donate books to elementary school libraries and promote literacy.

• Study Abroad: These trips center around learning a certain subject in more depth, such as when students study art for a few weeks in Italy. 

• Exchange Programs: Berkeley organizes exchange programs, including one with Colegio Bristol in Madrid, Spain. Each year, our students visit Madrid, and the Spanish students visit us in return.

• Experiential: These excursions are designed to get students out of their comfort zones so they can learn new skills, such as an annual hiking trip for all eighth graders to Pisgah National Forest in North Carolina that builds grit, resilience, and teamwork.

• College Visits: The staff members in Berkeley’s Bray College Counseling Center organize trips for Upper Division students to visit different colleges and universities.

• Special Invitations: Sometimes certain Berkeley groups earn the opportunity to travel—for instance, our Pipe and Drum Corps is invited to play in the St. Patrick’s Day Parade in Boston, MA, each year.

Through travel, we aspire for our students to:

• increase their capacity to understand and accept individuals from different cultures and backgrounds
• form deeper bonds with their friends, teachers, and classmates
• feel empowered to work with others toward solving issues
• practice and build upon their world language skills
• learn more about themselves and their own culture
• build confidence by safely taking them outside their comfort zones