Over March break, 14 KO students embarked on a trip to Washington, D.C., and over the six-day trip, students got to visit monuments, meet with the offices of Connecticut’s members of Congress, and discuss current issues with students across the country.
The trip was led and extensively planned by history teacher Steph Sperber. The planning process for the trip began all the way back in May 2023. KO also partnered with an organization called Close Up, which provided special programming for the trip. After almost two years since the planning started, Ms. Sperber’s initial idea came to fruition this March in a trip that was both fun and educational.
Students who went on the trip were seniors Joella Asapokhai, Francesca Lamattina, Zaire Ramiz, juniors Hannah Bateson, Gordon Beck, Leo Kollen, Olivia Pilecki, Jackson Poulin, Betsy Mandell, Teague Shamleffer, Sruthi Thiyagarajan, Arthur Tittmann, and sophomores Genesis Frimpong and Ellory Goodhue.
The trip itself contained two parts to the programming. The first part was visiting the important sites, museums, and memorials across Washington, D.C. The second part of the trip was civic engagement programming facilitated by Close Up. In the evenings, there were structured workshops with other students from across the country where they discussed current issues and proposed bills in Congress.
One of the highlights from the trip was getting to visit Capitol Hill. KO students got to meet with various staff members from the offices of Connecticut’s members of Congress. They started at the House of Representatives with Representative John Larson’s office. Then, the group got the unique opportunity to take the underground tram from the House of Representatives to the Senate.
They met with the offices of Senators Chris Murphy and Richard Blumenthal. Students asked questions and learned what it’s like to work on Capitol Hill from the perspectives of those serving in office.
Ms. Sperber is friends with a staff member for New Hampshire Senator Maggie Hassan, so the group was able to get another perspective on working in politics. “He gave a great perspective about kind of being a lifer on the Hill and working with multiple different pieces of the administrations,” Ms. Sperber said, “both in the Senate, the House, and the executive branch under different presidents.” The KO group then got a tour of the Capitol from one of the interns in Senator Hassan’s office and learned more about the history of the building.
When they visited the various sites throughout the trip, not only did they get to take in the beauty and significance of them, but they also had meaningful conversations facilitated by Close Up with the other students from across the country. For example, they got to explore the war memorials, then have a conversation about whether war memorials glorify war or honor the people who fought and died in them.
Another instance of civic engagement on the trip was a mock Congress session that students participated in. They got to play various roles like lobbyists or propose a bill, and they discussed current bills in Congress.
KO also added a full day of programming to the existing trip and visited more significant museums D.C. has to offer. On the initial Sunday they landed, they visited the African American Museum, and then on Friday, after the official programming ended, they visited the US Holocaust Museum.
Ms. Sperber shared that the group of students made the trip even more amazing. “I had the best group of students,” Ms. Sperber said. She continued to talk about how the group of students really enhanced the experience of the trip. “They were fun,” Ms. Sperber added. “Some of the other teachers just dropped off their students and did the teacher programming. I wanted to be with our students because they were fun, and some of the most thoughtful, well-educated, and curious students.”
Ms. Sperber also shared how getting to experience the trip alongside students from other schools helped provide new perspectives for KO students. “They were really confronted with a lot of opinions they had never seen in this small West Hartford bubble or Connecticut bubble,” Ms. Sperber said, “that they knew existed, but had never really had to work with students with really different experiences and perspectives. And they handled it with such grace.”
KO hopes to hold a trip to Washington, D.C., every other year so that every class will get the chance to participate either in their junior or senior year. After a successful trip, hopefully, this trip will be the start of a biannual tradition that students in the future will get to experience.
