Learning Across Morocco

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Over spring break, Friends’ Global Education program took Upper School students to Morocco for a deeply engaging educational experience grounded in cultural study, reflection, and exchange. Traveling with Kara Kutner, Joseph Sills, and Mouna Fdilat, students moved from Casablanca to Rabat to Marrakech, encountering sites that opened up conversations about history, religion, architecture, and daily life. From the Hassan II Mosque to the blue-and-white streets of Rabat, from Ben Youssef Madrasa and the Marrakech souk to the villages and landscapes of the Atlas Mountains, the trip invited students to learn through direct experience.

Upper Schoolers reflected on the relationship between Islamic and Quaker spaces for worship, learned about Amazigh history and ways of life in the mountains, and visited Dar Taliba, where they met girls from rural communities whose access to education is made possible through residential support. Across the trip, students engaged Morocco as a place of layered histories and artistic traditions.

There was also plenty of joy woven through the trip: train rides filled with card games and karaoke, camel rides just outside the city, calligraphy lessons, shared meals, henna, and music. By the end of the week, students had not only experienced Morocco’s history, artistry, and hospitality, but had also built a stronger community with one another. As one student put it, “My cheeks hurt from smiling so much.”