If Marlena McQueen’s day job doesn’t work out, she could always start a travel service with her students.

Because of Ms. McQueen’s Kennedy-Powell Elementary school fifth-grade class, a pair of women will begin traveling across the country this week, from Jamestown, Va., to San Francisco, in the shortest amount of time possible, while spending the least amount of money, and going through the most states.

“I was initially reluctant to become involved in this,” Ms. McQueen said. “But the kids got so excited about it that we decided to go for it.”

McQueen’s fifth-grade class, known as “Team McQueen,” featuring 19 students, competed against 38 other fifth-grade classrooms in a national travel geography competition presented by the North Central Ohio Educational Service Center.

On Thursday, the students awaited the results of the competition in the school’s cafeteria, via videoconferencing, and erupted in applause when they found out they had won.

“We were up to the challenge,” said Michelle Rahmings, 11. “I kind of had this feeling like we were going to win it. This whole thing was very cool.”

The goal of the competition was to teach the students about famous historical sites, budgeting and calculating money, and how to measure distance and time.

“It was a lot of fun,” said Jessie Brandon, 11. “We put in a lot of teamwork.”

Although there will be two travelers taking the students’ trip, each team in the competition was responsible for one traveler.

There were several rules involved with the competition, including the fact that the team’s traveler could not hop a flight. Students were limited to automobile rentals, boats, buses or trains.

“It was hard,” said Jason Swindoll, 10. “We had to fact check the mileage on cars, and break down travel logs. But in the end, we got everything done.”

Team McQueen had their traveler go through 18 states, making stops in Washington, D.C.; New Orleans; Chicago; Denver; and Salt Lake City on the way to San Francisco, traveling 4,847 miles, at a cost of $713.86. The trip will last six days.

The team mostly used trains, although they had their traveler rent a car once, and ride a bus and take a taxi.

Students were broken into groups to determine transportation costs and weather conflicts, and had to take into account food and supplies. Ms. McQueen said her students worked on the project for about 45 minutes a day for three weeks.

“We have the opportunity to work on video conferencing projects all the time,” said Debra Moore, a librarian at Kennedy-Powell, who encouraged Ms. McQueen to participate in the program. “We just thought that this would be a great way to hit on a number of different subjects at the same time.”

Students had to use the Internet to research the trip.

Katrina Moore and Kathy Mohr of Ohio are the travelers. The pair will keep daily journals and report to the students from across the country via Podcasts.

Team McQueen won a class pizza party for their efforts.