Following pandemic disruption, New Trier civil rights trip to America’s South finally happens

For one group of New Trier High School students and teachers, an out-of-state field trip to learn about the Civil Rights Movement was more than just a way to learn outside of the classroom.

It also brought history to life, they said.

Back in April, 32 students enrolled in New Trier’s Integrated Global Studies School, along with their teachers, spent four days in the South, primarily Alabama with a stop in Tennessee, learning about the Civil Rights Movement.

And on Tuesday, two of those students and two teachers shared their experiences with the New Trier School Board during its regular meeting.

Dr. Dan Weidner, New Trier’s associate principal for administrative services, said the Integrated Global Studies School, known as IGSS, began during the 2009-’10 school year to provide “experiential learning” to juniors and seniors, studying “global issues” through the subjects of English, social studies and art.

English teacher Mac Guy called the field trip “exceptionally amazing” and credited his colleague, social studies teacher Lindsay Tobias, for coming up with the idea back in 2019, when it ended up canceled because of the pandemic.

“Thanks to her persistence, we were still able to make it happen, just a number of years later,” Guy said.

Tobias said their itinerary included a stop in Memphis to see the National Civil Rights Museum, located at the site of the former Lorraine Motel, where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. The group then went to Alabama and visited Birmingham, Selma and Montgomery.

Prior to the trip, the class also reportedly read “Beloved,” by Toni Morrison, which tells the story of formerly enslaved people in the post-Civil War era.

Senior student Kate Ring was one of the participants in the field trip and said she was “taken aback” by all that she learned.

One takeaway from the trip was that racism is still a problem today, the students said.

“There are places in the world that won’t look back on history and won’t recognize what has happened, and just push it away and move on, even though it still happens today in the current world,” Ring said.

She added that visiting the South also highlighted parts of the Civil Rights Movement that are sometimes “glossed over” in history classes, such as the regularity of lynchings.

Fellow senior Lola Jensen called the trip “probably the most amazing experience at school that I’ve ever had,” and she praised the experiential learning that IGSS supports.

She said one highlight was visiting the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, which is adjacent to Kelly Ingram Park, where many demonstrations during the Civil Rights Movement were held.

Jensen said seeing the park immediately after learning about it was “emotional” for her.

“It really bridged my education within school and within learning from textual documents and documentaries into real life,” she said. “And it made me realize how important it is to go out and experience these things and this living history.”

Tobias said the hope is that every two years, IGSS will do this field trip, which she said means every student in the program will get to experience it.

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