The D.C. trip is the highlight of their year and even middle school experience. The trip was jam-packed with museum visits, photo ops, and bus rides of varying lengths. Students could pick what they thought was the best part of the trip, but there were too many from which to choose.
Since early on in the school’s history, The Benjamin School provides its students unique experiences. The fun starts in fifth grade with a Circle F Dude Ranch trip and continues through middle school. Sixth grade goes to St. Augustine, and the seventh grade goes to the Florida Keys.
The D.C. trip lasted less than five days, but the itinerary was jam-packed. History teachers made sure of that. Mr. Devries says, “We did a lot of really good preparation in terms of the curriculum based on feedback from years past. The students had a really good knowledge base about the places we went to.”
TBS visits the same museums each year in conjunction with the history curriculum. Eight graders spent the first quarter and a half of school studying American involvement in World Wars I and II. They also covered the Nazis’ rise to power, the Holocaust, and the Civil Rights movement in great detail. The purpose of the D.C. trip is to take learning outside of the classroom and into the places 8th graders studied. They visited the American History Museum and the National Holocaust Museum on the first two days and the Museum of African American History, the Spy Museum, and the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum on the last two. 8th grader Amia Fleming Lake said, “I really liked the National Portrait Gallery because we had no questions to answer about it. I felt like I could relax and just enjoy it .” They also went to Arlington National Cemetery, home to over 400,000 veterans and their families, and the National Holocaust Museum and Memorial.
The trip included two very special ceremonies. One was a wreath-laying ceremony at the eternal flame for President John F. Kennedy. He called for the Special Forces of the United States to be created so the Green Berets honor him each year. The second was held for TBS alumnus Chief Warrant Officer Jonathan Farmer.
As told by many classes who came before, the 8th grade Washington D.C. trip is truly unforgettable. Fleming Lake adds, “It was a really special experience to travel with my friends and my class as a whole. We really connected as a grade in DC.” Although the trip only lasted four days, the memories will last forever.
