Quaker Valley middle schoolers to see ‘rite of passage’ return this school year
Share this post:
A right of passage of Quaker Valley School District middle schoolers returns after a two-year pandemic hiatus.
The eighth-grade trip to historic sites has traditionally been a several-day educational and bonding experience for youngsters in Sewickley and surrounding communities.
About 150-or-so students have gone each year since the 1970s.
It’s usually for a few days in May coinciding with the high school prom to minimize impact on in-class instructional time, Assistant Superintendent Andrew Surloff said.
Class photos documenting the trip, with a majority of them taken outside of a Washington, D.C. monument or the Capitol Building, rest on the walls outside the middle school auditorium.
“It’s usually tied to the eighth-grade social studies curriculum, but for many years it’s been known as the Washington, D.C. trip,” Surloff said. “In recent years, they’ve gone to Gettysburg.
“It’s almost become a traditional rite of passage: that before eighth graders go into high school, they have this one last bonding experience and the experience of learning to be independent before they were going to be expected to be independent in high school.
”It’s a really important tradition that the district’s had for a long time.”
Students would visit museums, Colonial Williamsburg, Va, Arlington National Cemetery, George Washington’s Mt. Vernon home and other grounds of national significance to help bring history to life.
“It really just created context for students and made their eighth grade year, that last middle school year before high school, seem a lot more real,” Surloff said.
The past two years students have gone either to their classrooms or stayed home due to covid. District officials hope to change that.
Eighth graders will visit the Gettysburg National Military Park Museum and Visitor Center as well as Hershey Park all in one day May 20.
Students and staffers will leave from the school at 6 a.m. and return around 10:30 p.m.
Surloff said the multi-day experience was reduced because overnight travel may not be possible due to the district’s health and safety plan and safety measures, as well as minimizing potential loss of money parents and students would have invested.
Previous trips cost around $400 to $450 per student. Organizers are trying to keep everything under $200. That’s a tough task when it comes to chartering buses with rising gas prices.
The district has offered scholarships to students who have needed financial assistance. That practice will continue.
Some students also sold items through Believe Kids as a means of fundraising for the trip.
“Finances have never kept a Quaker Valley student from attending an eighth grade class trip,” Surloff said.
Logistics, however, is another matter.
“It’s been quite a challenge to try and plan a variety of things with the way the world has been,” said Brian Slencak, eighth-grade sponsor and co-trip coordinator. “You need to plan and think things through and make sure everything’s thought of before we get on the road.”
Slencak has been going on the trips for 20 years and planned them for the past decade.
He and eighth grade history teacher Ryan Kelly have been planning the trip’s return since the fall.
“We’re trying to put something back into these students’ lives,” Slencak said.”Put the educational piece along with the fun piece back into the end of their eighth grade year.
”I think it gives them a new perspective, a new understanding when you’re actually there (at these sites). You can take that teachable moment into reality with being at the spot and remembering class.”
Slencak said teachers who go on the trips are not given any additional compensation.
“We have tremendous staff (that) loves to be around their students,” he said. “When we asked for chaperones, they were excited and happy to be a part of it. Without them giving their time, it wouldn’t be the same. You can’t replace those relationships that they have with the kids, and their expectations that they have for the kids. It kind of makes it that much more special having them there.”
It’s unclear how many students will participate this year. A survey will be sent out to middle school families within the next couple weeks to gauge interest.