At high noon on Jan. 20, when President-elect Donald Trump takes the stage in Washington D.C. to be sworn into office, several students from Heritage Academy will be watching from the crowd.
Deb Shelton, Heritage’s 11th and 12th grade history and government teacher, has taken groups of school children to two past inaugurations when she worked at other schools, but she said she thinks this is the first time for Heritage students to get this opportunity of a lifetime.
When the headmaster asked her to plan an educational trip to Washington D.C. in an effort to initiate more school trips, Shelton said she knew it had to be during the inauguration.
“The reason we’re going is to be educated into how the government actually functions,” she said. “I want them to…see where the government works and how it operates.
“The transfer of power from one party to another, I think is the most important thing to witness,” she added. “It just doesn’t happen in other countries, and I think that makes the United States unique. And I want them to grasp that idea.”
Fifteen sixth – through 12th-grade students signed up last spring to witness that transfer.
The group will not only be present at the inauguration but will also get to meet Mississippi Sen. Roger Wicker and tour the Smithsonian and the Holocaust Memorial Museum, among other sightseeing opportunities over four days.
But Bertha Mireles, a freshman at Heritage, said she is most excited for the inauguration. The 14-year-old said she has never even seen one on TV.
“I’ll see it with my own eyes. That’s what interests me,” she said.
Hunter Perrigin, a sophomore, said he is looking forward to the trip as a whole because “traveling, wherever, broadens your horizons.”
But he said when he signed up to go, the idea of getting to witness one of the most historical inaugurations — whether Democrat Hillary Clinton had been elected as the first woman president or Republican Donald Trump — is the main reason he wanted to make the trip.
“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Not everyone gets to see it. Not everyone gets to witness it firsthand,” Perrigin said.
Perrigin’s class has learned briefly about the tradition of the U.S. presidential inauguration in his U.S. history class and followed the presidential election during Shelton’s school-wide Promote the Vote event.
Shelton said she hopes this trip teaches the students about how their government and democracy work, as well as encourages them to become more involved in politics.
“There’s just no way to measure what they’re going to see and what they’re going to learn,” she said.
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