WHITEHALL — A group of 24 Whitehall High School students became the latest to have the opportunity to travel to Washington, D.C. in November through the Close Up Foundation, which furnishes trips such as that one to students nationwide.
Mid-November isn’t usually the first time frame that pops to mind when one considers a trip to D.C. However, Whitehall teacher Jen Dennis, who made a school trip herself while she was a Viking junior, thinks it’s an ideal time to go - less so for the weather (though it’s certainly better there than in Michigan), but for the timing, coming right after the United States elections. When Dennis went as a student in 2000, it happened to be during the lengthy period in which no one yet knew whether George W. Bush or Al Gore had won the presidential election. The first time Dennis took students in 2019, it happened to coincide with impeachment hearings in progress against President Donald Trump.
The experience of being near history actually unfolding is one Dennis can’t get enough of.
“Even if it isn’t a presidential election year, they get to see the process of senators coming in and staff people looking for new jobs, which the students didn’t realize was a thing,” Dennis said. “All three times I’ve taken students, we’ve been there on Veterans Day, which is a cool thing to see the memorials there. It’s a great opportunity for the students.
“Any time I can take our students outside the classroom and get to be a part of it and immerse ourselves into learning about history and the government, I want to do that.”
Whitehall District Schools was able to partially fund the week-long trip through a grant worth “about $6,000,” fellow Whitehall teacher Brian Milliron said, from the Gerber Foundation. Dennis and Milliron chaperoned the students on the trip, staying just outside of the city.
In addition to doing some fundraising of their own for the trip, students were required to attend a few meetings in order to go on the trip.
It’s the third time Dennis has taken students to D.C., having also gone in 2022. The Close Up Foundation doesn’t limit schools on how many trips they can take, but teachers have found it easier to only need to worry about funding trips biannually.
“We bend over backwards,” Milliron said. “We help them raise that money, because I know stuff’s tough. We all know that. That’s why we do it every other year. We have the fundraising aspect, and it takes a little while to raise money.”
It’s an experience, though, that the students find worth the investment. Kate Beda was among the students who attended - she said her older sister Molly enjoyed it when she went, which piqued her interest - and one experience she found memorable was laying a wreath on George Washington’s gravesite at Mount Vernon, which she did alongside fellow student Kaiden Sylvester. She also found the Holocaust museum a memorable experience; Dennis said that is a consistently popular choice for students.
Many students who go on the trip have career goals in mind that might take them to D.C. Beda wasn’t one of them, but the educational value of the trip still stood out to her.
“I think it’s an important experience that everyone should experience,” Beda said. “It’s really cool to see how your own government works. There’s no way to really understand it until you go and see it the way that we got to.”
As part of the jam-packed trip - Milliron half-joked that the students “average about 22,000 steps a day” over the course of their time in D.C. - the Whitehall students met with congressman John Moolenaar and senator Gary Peters, as well as a representative from the office of outgoing senator Debbie Stabenow. Students also sat in the Senate chamber and witnessed votes.
“It was the day after Congress went back into session,” Dennis said. Capitol Hill was bustling and it was crazy, in a good way, to see all the people. To have the students be able to say, ‘That’s the senator from New Jersey’ and ‘That’s the senator from here’ (is great). We got to sit in the Senate and watch it happen in the gallery up there. For the students to see it in session, it was interesting to hear that perspective.”
The Whitehall students were also joined by other groups from around the country. Dennis said groups from New Hampshire, Texas and Puerto Rico were among those Whitehall students got to spend time with. Getting the perspective of people from different parts of the country, she noted, was valuable.
“When they’re having debates and hot topic and current topic conversations, this is our West Michigan lens and our view of this issue, but what does someone from Puerto Rico think of the 2024 election, since they can’t even vote in it?” Dennis said. “Students can realize, ‘This might be my lens, but other people might look at the same issue or concept and look at it differently.’”
Widening students’ worlds figuratively is a favorite part of the trips for Dennis, but so too is widening it literally.
“So many of them had never been on a plane,” Dennis said. “So many of them had never been to a city the size of D.C., let alone riding a metro and navigating that. It’s great to show them that the world’s a little bit bigger than Whitehall. So many of them weren’t ready for it to end. When you’re hearing, ‘When can we go back?’, that’s always a good feeling. You know it was successful.”
Dennis is looking forward to continuing to lead the trips going forward. Milliron said Dennis has even floated the idea of expanding the program and trying to make a Europe trip happen at some point.
“They came back and they were hungry for more,” Dennis said of the students. “They want to be citizens. They want to be knowledgeable. They want to know, ‘Why are we voting for this person? What is their platform?’ They know the process. They want to become more active citizens, and that’s what we want to see.”
