For more than 20 years, Rexann Dubiel has introduced the world and its many cultures and people to her third-grade students at Sunset Beach Elementary in Hawaii’s North Shore of Oahu.

Inspiring them to use their imaginations, Dubiel’s students travel with her around the planet using a global
learning curriculum she designed where her students begin their classroom adventure in Outer Space, land on Planet Earth, and journey from continent to continent during the school year.

Their worldwide adventure has her students constantly making connections, comparisons and contrasting their lifestyles with others while also having fun learning.

“I want to make them citizens of the world, respecting others’ differences and similarities, and, most importantly, inspiring humanitarianism,” she says.

In 2007, Dubiel created Rex the Surf Dog, an homage to her late wired hair fox terrier, Honey, to assist her in showing her students the continent of North America and the world while promoting literacy and other worthy causes.

“I was taking a trip back East and decided to be more environmentally conscious by taking the train,” she recalls. “When I planned the train trip, I also wanted my students to see my journey across North America, so I invented Rex the Surf Dog, created the blog, and have about 2,000 photos of his travels with commentary on his literacy site.”

With his bold graphics, big smile, and heart-emblazoned chest, Rex the Surf Dog’s mileage and celebrity has spanned far and wide since that first cross country trip from L.A. to D.C. and back.

Rex’s passport includes stamps from Mongolia, Osaka, Tokyo, Tuscany, Paris, London, Devon, England, Korea, the Galapagos Islands, the top of Mauna Kea, the North Pacific Gyre, Puerto Rico, and numerous cities throughout the U.S.

Rex mostly travels with Dubiel and family while on vacation, but copies of Rex also travel with her students, friends, and fellow teachers having visited Denmark, Yellowstone National Park and France, Italy, and Greece
this past summer.

In 2009, National Geographic published Rex’s blog (http://www.rexthesurfdog.com) – which averages between 50 to 100 visits a day with weekly posts — in its children’s website, and his image appears in the adult English comedy “Tamara Drewe” directed by Stephen Frears.

Rex has also been featured on television, various newspapers and magazines, and will soon publish books and
have his own cooking show highlighting healthy dishes from around the world.

To further assist Dubiel in her quest for teaching literacy and expanding her students’ geographical awareness, Rex promoted a surf movie, “Fiberglass and Megapixels”, last November to raise money for a summer literacy program Dubiel designed 8 years ago called Right on Reader.

Fans of Rex can download free calendars and coloring books from his blog.

When she’s not traveling the globe with Rex and teaching students, Dubiel spends much of her time volunteering on the island with the Outdoor Circle garden club, writing and taking pictures for Aloha Surf Guide, working as her school’s garden site coordinator for the musician Jack Johnson, and gardening and biking.

“Everything I do is literacy based. I love to share and encourage children of all ages to eat right, be kind, exercise (it makes your brain smarter), be mindful, and read,” she says. “I love inspiring children to love to learn and to make books their best friends for life.”

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