Juniors Explore Washington, DC
The grade-wide junior trip to Washington, DC has been a Riverdale tradition since 2011. It accompanies the Constructing America (CA) curriculum, giving students a first-hand experience of our nation’s capital and traditions. History teacher and lead planner of the CA trip Dr. Ellen Baker said that the trip allows students “to think about how ideas about the nation are inscribed in the landscape as well as in art.” The trip consists of visits to museums like the National Portrait Gallery and National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC), as well as several monuments. The trip is widely considered one of Riverdale’s best; it is a highlight of junior year.
The DC trip has been through many iterations as a Riverdale tradition. “The first year that we did it,” Dr. Baker said, “it was a little bit ad hoc and it was scheduled in May…but that does not work for the school schedule because there are so many end-of-year events.” Due to those conflicts, the trip now happens in the fall or winter each year, with this year’s excursion taking place in January. Another significant addition to the trip since 2011 is advocacy group visits, which have since become an integral part of the experience. Dr. Baker explained, “We call the advocacy groups and we set up visits in advance with a lot of organizations that do non-profit stuff, lobbying organizations of various sorts, [and] some governmental agencies, but mostly groups that are outside of the government.” The advocacy groups fall across all parts of the ideological spectrum, from the conservative American Enterprise Institute to the more liberal New America, as well as issue-specific organizations like the DC Forensic Nurse Examiners. This year, the entire 11th grade heard a lecture from Ms. Courtney Snowden, a professional lobbyist at the Blueprint Strategy Group, to further their understanding of how advocacy functions. A select cohort of students also visited the staff of New York Representative Mr. Ritchie Torres.
Because the CA trip is a significant undertaking, planning must begin months in advance, involving not only CA teachers, but also the administrative staff here at Riverdale. Dr. Baker mentioned the “amazing support from Christine Osoria and the Head of Upper School’s office,” who were integral to planning the trip. To demonstrate the scale of the CA trip preparation, Dr. Baker explained that the hotel was booked last year, and “by October, [the planners] were contacting advocacy organizations, speakers… trying to get the pieces into place.”
The free time available to students on the DC trip is part of what makes it a milestone in the Riverdale experience. Junior Adaugo Ejiogu said that her favorite part of the trip was “how much time you get to spend with people in your room…and the independence given on the trip.” The independence given to students was a popular aspect of the trip; Junior Seraphina Ding loved “the freedom that we got to explore D. C. with our friends… my friends and I really took advantage of that free time to explore D. C. and the museums there, and we wouldn’t have been able to do that [with] a more structured schedule.” Students not only explored monuments and museums on their own, but also had the opportunity to get dinner and lunch with their friends.
Juniors also enjoyed the museums and interaction with the CA curriculum on the trip. Ejiogu said her favorite museum was NMAAHC, which the entire grade was required to attend. The museum features a permanent exhibit on the history of African Americans in the United States, with upper floors consisting mostly of temporary exhibits about African American culture. Ding said that NMAAHC, along with the National Museum of the American Indian, “had exhibitions very relevant to our CA curriculum…but specifically tailored for public history, or rather teaching non-academic audiences about America’s past.” To learn more about museum curation, students heard a lecture from Ms. Tsione Wolde-Michael, who curated the permanent exhibit at the National Museum of African American History and Culture.
The CA trip is an eye-opening experience for many students. Dr. Baker said that the greatest benefit is “a heightened curiosity; you go to this place and there are things that you weren’t expecting and you come back …revitalized, seeing the world around us and how it connects to what we’re studying.” For Ding, the most valuable aspect of the trip was learning about the presentation of history in museums: “History had to be presented to the public in different ways, especially at the seat of the federal government.”
The hard work of planning the DC trip paid off; it was an amazing experience socially and educationally for this year’s juniors. Moving into the second semester, this experiential education trip will inform learning in CA classes and connect students to physical artifacts and art that represent the history of the United States. Through many of its memorable experiences, the DC trip encourages curiosity and is one of the many experiences that makes the CA curriculum exceptional.
