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John Gardiner is the Managing Director of The School Travel Company, a tour operator specialising in school trip itineraries for school and youth groups to the UK, Europe and beyond. As a father and avid traveller, John is very passionate about providing students with effective and attractive learning experiences outside of the classroom. By sharing his expert tips with teachers, he allows them to inspire their students and bring their studies to life.
The plaster casts of the bodies found on the site are a brutal reminder of how suddenly life in the city was ended; they tend to have a profound effect on young minds. An absorbing insight into Roman culture is given by the lovely frescos perfectly preserved within the villas of these towns. Art students and historians alike will marvel on the scenes of life in the first century.
While students may get excited about the drama and horror of the eruption of Vesuvius, actually what many young individuals find most haunting about visiting Pompeii is the insight it gives into day-to-day life in seventy nine AD. It is the trivial, almost mundane, details that emerge as the most astonishing for students visiting Pompeii, and the neighbouring town of Herculaneum. Items like beds, food, and bowls remain as they would have been presently the volcano erupted and students are able to see these historic civilisations as similar to their own.
Of course, this is more than just a historic school trip. Those teaching historic languages will have the option to highlight how Latin has developed into modern Italian as they explore the bustling modern city of Naples. The Bay of Naples is a astonishing part of Italy in its own right, so you and your group may well choose to spend a day or two exploring the bay and learning more about modern life in Italy.
One of the hardest points of teaching history, Classics, or historic languages can be getting a category to truly connect with the subject matter. Some students struggle with making the connection between their own lives and people of individuals who have been dead for thousands of years, and subsequently fail to engage properly with these astonishing subjects.
One of the ways to adjust this mindset is to take your pupils to the historic towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum so that they can see for themselves how normal and like them these historic individuals really were.
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On the tours we organise as part of your school trip, you and your students will be taken around these historic sites by expert guides who will have the option to reply all of your classs questions. As well as exploring Pompeii and Herculaneum, your group will get to see the towering form of Vesuvius itself so that they can imagine the moment when the volcano began to show signs of instability and eruption.
Whether you are teaching Ancient History, Latin, Italian, Classics, or Art History, this trip to Naples and Pompeii can be tailored to tie in to your curriculum. The purpose on the back of the school trip is the same, no matter what the discipline: to bring your teaching off the page and into the sensory world so that it becomes more real, and more exciting, for each of your students.
Naples and Beyond
The Real Life Drama of Pompeii
