The eighth-grade class traveled to Boston for their celebratory class trip on May 15-16.
The first three stops focused on Boston’s literary and cultural history: students read an excerpt from Dr. King’s 1965 “Freedom March” speech at The Embrace monument on Boston Common, they recited key passages from John F. Kennedy’s 1961 “City Upon a Hill” speech in front of the Massachusetts State House, and they examined a primary source from 1851–“Caution!!”–in an alley on the north slope of Beacon Hill.
During the afternoon, the students explored Boston’s Black Heritage Trail with a guide from the National Park Service. Two highlights included the Robert Gould Shaw Memorial and the African Meeting House on Beacon Hill. At the African Meeting House, students stepped up to the rostrum to deliver memorized passages from Frederick Douglass’s “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” speech. Working together, the eighth-grade students now carry 2,500 words of the abridged text published in Douglass’s second autobiography, My Bondage and My Freedom (1855).
In the evening, students traveled to Thompson Island, where they enjoyed dinner, sunset on the beach, skipping rocks, a campfire under the stars, ‘smores, and the flickering lights of the city. Friday’s highlights included a ferry ride, a ride on the T, meandering along Boston’s Greenway, and a pizza feast at Antico Forno in the heart of the North End.
