Teacher helps create scholarship to give students travel opportunity

Shortly after Taylor Nix started teaching at Independence High School in 2013, he learned that the school’s history club was inactive.

Nix, a history teacher, led the charge to restart the club, and a new initiative by Nix’s family is making travel and education more accessible for students.

Nix has overseen student trips to Costa Rica, one to Europe — including Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic — and Greece.

As Nix planned the first two trips, he knew there were students in Independence who wanted to participate but costs were a barrier.

Nix created a scholarship with the help of his family to cover the full price of the trip for one student, also supplying money for passport fees and spending.

“That kind of rubbed me the wrong way that there wasn’t a good opportunity,” Nix said. “We just can’t fundraise that amount of money, so I approached my family and said, ‘Hey, I’d like to offer this scholarship.’ … And my brothers and my mom were all super into it.”

Nix, with help from his mother Suzi Campbell and brothers Cody and Jimmy, created an application that asks applicants what they hope to pursue after high school as well as why they want to go on the trip.

Nix and his brothers grew up in a situation that would have made such travels difficult, he said, adding that his family wanted to fight that for current students.

“Even if we did have the opportunity to go somewhere, we usually never had money to go out to lunch or buy souvenirs, so we wanted to make sure that whoever we did this for would be able to participate in everything that we did,” Nix said.

District Administrator/High School Principal Paul Franzwa said it is rare for a teacher to offer such a scholarship.

“It’s a pretty generous effort on their part and I think it just speaks to the family and providing opportunities to kids that otherwise wouldn’t have them,” Franzwa said.

History club is open to all high school students and aims to expand student education through travel. The club ranges from 10 to 25 students in any year. 

Trips occur every two years so that students have a pair of opportunities to travel while in high school. A visit to Japan this June awaits 15 students currently in the club.

Nix said a good history club trip is about balancing fun with educational opportunities, which continues to be a work in progress.

Costa Rica involved recreational opportunities including whitewater rafting, zip-lining, kayaking and rainforest hiking but was light on historical references. The Europe trip leaned heavily on history with museums, concentration camp tours and other learning but could have used more breaks for fun, Nix said.

“We’ve been kind of narrowing that down as we go on trips,” he said. “We’re trying to look for a good mix of fun, culture and history to have a good balance.”

Franzwa believes the trips are a rare opportunity considering the small size of Independence.

“In the relatively small, rural district we’re in, opportunities like this don’t come very often so to broaden their horizons outside of Wisconsin is invaluable,” the administrator said. “Educators do this because they want to give students opportunities like this that they might not otherwise have. In rural Wisconsin, socioeconomic statuses of families range and it might be a stepping stone to what these kids do once they leave our building because of this experience.”

Most club members continue to travel after high school, which Nix is happy about.

“If I were to boil it down to one core thing it’s to give them the confidence and interest in traveling,” Nix said. Whether it’s going out west to see Yellowstone or the west coast or traveling to another country, studying abroad in college, I think these trips can do a good job to help them see, ‘Hey, I can do this. I’m brave enough to do this and it’s worth it.’”