Throughout the trip south, eighth graders fill journals with observations and reflections. These are the raw material for scrapbooks and spoken presentations that they work on for the rest of the month.

 

Below is a different kind of writing: an eighth grader's hour-by-hour account of the first day. If the students' journals were blogs, then these would be one student's "tweets":

3:07pm

Mr. Brown announces our arrival in the historic city of Birmingham.

 

3:15pm

We enter the Civil Rights Institute, where we receive a tour, with beautifully moving and powerful videos, artifacts, literature and art. After the museum, we head across the street to Kelly Ingram Park (right) where the Children’s march took place in 1963.

6:04pm

We go to Nikki’s West for dinner, where some of us experience southern cooking for the first time: the specials tonight are catfish and fried chicken liver…

 

7:08pm

Back on the bus, we reflect on the day and drive to the hotel.