It was fun to have our annual conference in Boston at the Seaport Hotel to review our past year and to look ahead to the exciting things that we have planned for 2025/26 and 27 all of this going on while we have an exciting Olympics which has electrified us all for the past two weeks and showcased Paris as an extraordinary city.

One of the things that I reminded myself when we began the conference was the sheer weight of talent we have as a team. We are all travelers. We are all explorers, it’s funny because I was thinking of the early explorers from the Vikings through to Magellan and Elcano and of course to Cook, basic de Gama, and Christopher Columbus.

It’s extraordinary to imagine that in 1519 Magellan set off from Seville with some vague idea that the world was round. He never made it. Killed in the Philippines by anxious natives, Elcano left it to navigate the other half of the voyage and return to Seville in 1522. The return provided evidence as they sailed through what we now call the Magellan Straits that the world was decidedly round. We can look at some of the 196 countries that comprise our great world and expand our horizons. We have many countries to go, many places to visit, and many dreams to fulfill.

This is an exciting time. It’s exciting because teachers are traveling more than ever to places they never would have imagined. Students are investigating important things in our world like sustainability and climate change. They are learning different languages and traveling way beyond the 44 countries of Europe. Students will go on to help change and adapt their world. How important is that? We see the ravages of over tourism. We see the benefits of intelligent tourism.

This is our new world. Much as the explorers took chances. Didn’t fall off the end of the world. So we must take chances with travel. It’s not just an opportunity. It’s the only way to move ahead.