The average HBHA student knows there is a lot to look forward to in high school. Relaxed dress code, varsity sports, and mentoring Olympics are only a few of the promised rewards we all have been hearing about since our years in lower school. But the most exciting and important one of them all is the legendary high school trips.
Every other year at HBHA, the entire high school (and much of the faculty) embark on a stress-filled period of time known as the Trip Year.
For an entire school year, underclassmen and upperclassmen alike prepare themselves for their one or three-week-long journey taken either by a coach bus in the deep South or by several plane rides through Europe and Israel.
At first, the trip year is marked by excitement and anticipation, yet many find themselves feeling dejected as the workload increases, and mentoring sessions, readings, and classes seem to drag on and on. Even a portion of Winterims, a week meant as a break from school, is taken up by trip learning.
For the juniors and seniors embarking on the Jewish Heritage Trip, learning starts as early as August, with an entire class devoted to Israeli History during the first semester of our school year.
Junior Sabra Bergh explained the feelings surrounding this, saying, “We kind of expected this year for it to be more light, but we had a class for it the entire first semester, on top of mentorings first and second semester.”
For the freshmen and sophomores getting ready to start their journey throughout the American South, learning can also feel like a substantial amount of work. Even during Winterims, a week expected to be full of fun, juniors and seniors are required to do additional work for the Jewish Heritage Trip during one of the six winterim periods of our day.
However, the amount of time every student and teacher spends preparing for each trip serves as a constant reminder of what the trips will actually entail.
While feeling overwhelmed with the amount of learning was an extremely common feeling during the preparation before the trip, the actual time we spent in the South reinforced the idea behind all of the work.
From crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge, to standing in the destroyed convenience store where Emmett Till first encountered Carolyn Bryant, to walking through the hotel room where Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, the monumental experiences would not have been possible without the strenuous learning each of us undertook.
It turned out that we had no idea of the true scope and depth of the Civil Rights Movement, and experiencing each fact and story we had gone over in class on a deep and personal level was a type of fulfillment that only months of work could have produced.
This feeling is sure to be felt on the Jewish Heritage Trip as well, and as we walk through landmarks from Hitler’s Bunker, to Auschwitz, to the Dead Sea, the dedication each student put in will only add to our weeks there.
Keeping this in mind through the final stretch of learning for the Jewish Heritage Trip is essential to our education on the trip, and our journey would not be the same without it. These trips are a privilege, not a right, and can’t be taken for granted.
