Over the weekend, I had the pleasure of talking to a principle that works in the Inner School District of Vancouver. We were talking about how they are handling the Olympics and incorporating it into a 2 week educational theme with the students.

Most of these students that attend the inner schools are from families that are on welfare or single parent families and are in area with high crime rates. The students and their families cannot afford to go to the games themselves nor some of them never been able to go out side of their district due to lack of funds to even travel on public transportation.

However the Inner City school board is taking full advantage to educate the students, realizing that this is a once in a life time event and all should benefit the experience that is arriving in Vancouver in less than a month. The school are providing full field day trips to certain free Olympic venues across the city. Organizing these full day field trip, the students get to experience the atmosphere, be involved in the celebration of countries coming together and watch the olympics on the big screen TV’’s with thousands of other people from all over the world. On the days that they are not venturing into the city, University students are coming out to there schools. A specific example is the engineers from UBC are teaching/showing the students how to build certain Olympic structures, like the luge and the ski jump. I think this is an excellent chance to allow the students to study and learn information that is relevant to what is currently happening.

How are you going to engage yourself over the Olympics? Will you walk around downtown? Do you have tickets to events? Will you mingle with the visitors from all over the world?

If you are stuck, here is a website of free events that the city is offering:

http://www.citycaucus.com/2010freevenues#5362