TAC’s Field Trip to Eshab-ı Kehf and Tarsus Museums and the Olive Harvest
Driven by the school motto "Leaders for Turkey, Leadership for the World", TAC’s students resumed their onsite learning in the city of Tarsus, following the interruption with the pandemic, which helps students to get to know about their local community and culture and to interact with it. To reinforce learning in IBDP’s ToK and CAS components, the school organized an field trip with grade 11 and 12 IB students to the historic cave of Eshab-ı Kehf, where we explored the source of knowledge, its reliability, and the link between language and culture. It was exciting to know that such ancient caves exist so close to the TAC campus.
The most important part of the trip was the conversations with the locals, finding out more about olive and its production. It was exciting for students to listen to the mythological and cultural background of the olive plant from them in an environment they had never been before, led by the questions "What is carob plant”, “how are molasses produced?" On the other hand, it was a bit upsetting for the environment-minded TAC students to see the dirty and neglected state of the area of their visit.