Parkmont has had its fair share of adventures over the years. Since I started organizing trips in 2018, we have taken students to Puerto Rico, the Grand Canyon, and the Outer Banks, to name a few destinations. But this year was different. This was the big one. Alaska.
Alaska has long been on the roster of destinations for the 10-day class trips we take each spring. For years I have seen pictures from Parkmont’s last trip to Alaska, in 2016, playing in the photo carousel on our big screen TV in the lobby. I was amazed by the scenery (and a little jealous that I hadn’t had the opportunity to go), so I jumped at the chance when we got the green light to plan a visit to our 50th state.
Organized around a Main Lesson that focused on Alaska’s ecology and natural history, the trip offered a culmination of study and planning and an opportunity for students to interact with a place they had only seen in National Geographic magazines and Netflix nature documentaries.
We planned for a Session 5 departure. The class spent the first three weeks of the Session learning about anadromous fish, volcanic islands, and the reasons American politicians wanted a frozen, distant territory to call our own way back in 1867.
Eight students and I, accompanied by Middle School Coordinator Matt McClain and Assistant Head of School Nijole Gedutis, flew to Anchorage on May 15th. We crossed four time zones and dozens of ecosystems, and landed in a landscape even more dramatic and inspiring than we’d imagined. There are too many highlights to describe in a Passing notes article, so I will let the artwork of one of my students, and the amazing photos the class captured, tell the story.
