For the workshop, Democratic Movements we all got a chance to choose our own topic. Our assignment was to make a five minute presentation, a research paper, and an art project. Students studied topics like women's rights, immigration rights, maternal rights, non-proliferation and labor rights. Students worked very hard on their papers and artwork but the only thing we brought to DC was our presentations. The reason for this is so we can learn more about public speaking and speaking to an audience instead of just reading off a paper. Another thing we had to get prepared for DC was a location. This gave the student a chance to work on communication skills with adults and corporations as well as working together with peers to plan our trip.
Our trip was filled with learning about topics many of us have never heard of. One of the big locations we visited was the DEA or the Drug Enforcement Administration. Eric took us here to learn about drug misuse and we learned about how much of our population is affected by this horrible disease. Another big moment from the trip was when Giuliana took us to the FBI headquarters which was amazing to see. It's crazy to think we went to the FBI headquarters on a school trip and it was definitely the highlight of the trip for most people. Here we did so many different things like watching a film about the 10 most wanted list right now. It's so weird to think how dangerous a human could be to the point they are literally offering 2 million dollars just for information. We finished off the tour by watching some of the agents do target training while we watched behind a sheet of thick glass. We had never seen anything like it and we were so lucky to be able to have seen that.
On the second night we got to learn all about the different monuments. We went on the night monument tour where we basically waited until it was dark and got to walk around DC and learn about the different monuments. Some of the monuments we saw were The Lincoln Memorial, The Washington Monument, and the World War II Memorial. We didn't get to all of them because of how late it was and how tired we were but I'm so glad we got to experience this and everything on this fun trip.
Some students were lucky enough to have gotten somebody to talk with them. Myles and Ava even got people to talk to us in a room about their topic before they began. Students gave their presentations amazingly even though there were some setbacks like having the fire alarm go off during Avas presentation or Ainsley and Evi having to present in a loud cafeteria with about a hundred people talking over them. Besides that everyone delivered beautifully and you could really see the work they put into researching their topics.
These are only the highlights of the trip so that really shows how much fun we had and how many different things we experienced. We learned so many different things in the workshop from different students. We are all so grateful to go on these trips and thankful to all of our teachers, Tree, Tori, Kristina, and Brian.
Written by Gwennie Goodreau and Ava Hagerty
Photography by Olivia Mittelstaedt