For over 20 years and counting, once a year, South High takes students and staff on a field trip to Washington, DC, for one day to learn more about Jewish and American history. This year, on Tuesday, April 8th, 16 students, mainly 11th graders, were led by Laura Lanik and Roxanne Becker and boarded a flight bright and early to head off on their meaningful adventure. While this trip is mainly focused on visiting the Holocaust museum, conducted by Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC) who charters both the plane as well as the bus, it also gives a chance for the group to explore DC, visit the national monuments, and walk the National Mall.
Meilla Corkill-Bomgaars, a junior, and one of the 16 students who attended, said she had to wake up at 4 am and mentioned that the students from South seemed to be the only school from Minneapolis to go on the trip, despite there being many other schools from Minnesota in attendance.
Arriving around 10 am, they got onto a bus and headed straight to the museum auditorium for a presentation with previous Minnesota Vikings players, who chatted with the audience about their experiences being football players, the JCRC organization, and how to avoid Anti-Semitism.
When this trip first came to fruition, there was a Holocaust history class at South. While that has not been the case for some time, social studies teacher Laura Lanik sees this trip as an important and intriguing experience for all students to gain knowledge about both the Holocaust as well as the general impacts of genocides. She says that although she does cover some of the Holocaust in her social studies classes, she plans to start doing a whole unit on genocides and the Holocaust. “The museum was really impactful, there were two survivors there, they still have survivors come and talk to people, which I think is really amazing because, you know, they’re getting older and soon there isn’t going to be any.”
Ramaas Said, also an 11th grader at South, said that this portion of the trip was especially important to her because she got to “feel the final step of educating yourself on a subject, seeing it face to face. Being able to process the history with your own eyes was an experience I hadn’t had before.” Said notes that while she felt lucky to have been taught Holocaust history in middle school, she was shocked when she learned that her friends’ schools didn’t cover much on the topic at all.
In this current socio-political climate, beliefs surrounding the states of Palestine and Israel are in the news regularly. This creates the opportunity for reflection upon the messaging and intention of educational opportunities such as this one.
“With what’s happening in Palestine, it seemed like we weren’t allowed to mention it or even make connections to it. It was like a bad word we weren’t allowed to say.” Said said. Corkill-Bomgaars stated that, leading up to the trip this year, there was a lack of discussion between students and teachers at South relating to current events. “Apparently, they mentioned it more last year on the trip. But they did mention it at the museum, and they’re very much pro-Israel. They didn’t mention anything about Palestine at all.” This lack of acknowledgement of Palestine had students wondering how to interact with others on the trip. “When it got onto the subject of Zionism and the Zionist movement, it seemed like it didn’t delve as deep as I would’ve hoped.” Said said, “I understand that Zionists don’t reflect Jewish people as a whole, but it felt kind of ironic that we couldn’t make real-world connections back to what’s happening to another group of people.”
Overall, students and teachers alike hope this learning and exploration opportunity will continue to be offered in the future. Lanik reflects, “People always [say], like that’s kind of a crazy trip to be at the airport by 4:15 am and then you get back to the airport at 10:30 pm, to do it all in one day. But it’s worth it.” Said highly recommends the experience as well, “It’s a beautiful and rare opportunity, very fun!” This trip leaves a lasting impact for Said, who concluded, “History doesn’t repeat itself, it just rhymes.”
