Brad Cartwright

This week I want to take a moment to reflect on something that’s been on my mind lately—the connection between education and travel.

I’ve spent a lot of my adult life thinking about education. 

Thinking about the impact it has on people's lives.

And thinking about how lucky I was to be born into a family that valued it. 

My parents were both university graduates. So the question around our kitchen table was never if I would go to university—it was always which one I’d choose. 

And when I step back and think about it, I realize how extraordinary that is. Just three generations ago in my family, the conversation would have been about whether someone had made it through sixth grade or high school.

That kind of generational shift is something I carry with me every time I walk into a classroom.

And it’s something I think about often—especially now, after watching a recent interview that caught me off guard in the best way.

As one sometimes does during breakfast, I found myself watching a YouTube interview with Christiane Amanpour on Amanpour & Company on PBS. She was speaking with Rick Steves, someone I wasn’t all that familiar with.

Rick is a travel writer and journalist who’s spent his life encouraging people to explore the world. And in this particular interview, he was talking about a journal he recently rediscovered—his notes from a 1970s journey along the old “Hippie Trail”, from Istanbul to Kathmandu.

I thought the interview would be about the trip itself. But it wasn’t.

It was about the power of travel to transform our thinking.

Rick Steves said something that’s been echoing in my head ever since:

“Travel is a political act.”

Not political in the partisan sense, but political in the sense that it expands the mind, builds empathy, and softens the walls that divide us.

It forces us to reconsider what we thought we knew.

There have been so many little moments in my own travels that I now realize have shaped my teaching far more than any formal PD ever could.

One that stands out the most a train ride I took from Dhaka to Sylhet Bangladesh in 1999.

I was seated across from a man with thick, weathered hands—hands that told a very different life story than mine.

He handed me a hard-boiled egg. A simple gesture. A small kindness.

I wasn’t hungry.

But I ate it.

Because when language, culture, and class stand between two people—you eat the egg.

To refuse it would have been to refuse the gesture. To imply I didn’t trust him. To suggest I thought I was cleaner, safer, better.

So I smiled, and…ate the egg. 

And I’ve never forgotten that moment.

We’re lucky in education.

Our profession comes with the gift of time—time to travel, time to think, time to reflect.

And in my early years, I approached that time with a mindset of seeing as many places as I could. I had a checklist. A running tally.

But now, that urge to travel has shifted.

I don’t want to just see the world—I want to understand it.

Because with every new place, with every border crossed, I realize just how much I still don’t know. 

And more importantly, how much we all share.

The human experience is vast, yes—but it’s also incredibly similar.

And that realization has become central to how I teach.

It reminds me that real education doesn’t always come from textbooks or syllabi.

Sometimes it comes from being uncomfortable.

Sometimes it comes from listening instead of speaking.

And sometimes, it comes from a simple act of kindness on a train. 

Rick Steves called travel a political act.

I think he’s right.

Because the more we travel, the more we see, the more we understand...the less control misinformation and fear can have over us.

And in that way, travel is resistance.

It’s resistance to narrow thinking.

Resistance to division.

Resistance to the idea that the world is small, dangerous, or unknowable.

As teachers, we hold so much power to pass on this kind of understanding.

To encourage our students to learn not just about what’s out there—but about who’s out there. 

And if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s this:

If you bring your kindness, openness, and curiosity to a place, and someone else brings the same to meet you—one smile can transcend it all.

Maybe that’s what Rick meant.

And maybe that’s what we’re all trying to teach in our own way.

I hope you are well.

See you next week.