Journeying alongside Gordon’s eighth grade

above: Dr. deChabert in Montgomery, Alabama with the eighth graders who were in her family group on the trip. Family groups are smaller groups who connect throughout the trip for practical logistics and for conversation.

 

Dearest Gordon Family,

Spring is finally here. It is the season when warming soil and increased sunlight lead to green grass, buds and leaves on the trees, shy crocuses peeking out, and the return of perennials. The birds are busily building their nests in the trees, the squirrels are digging up their stores, and the geese are back from warmer climes. I grew up in a tropical climate, where the only seasons we had were wet and dry, so spring is a treat for me. Spring, with its colors, smells, and sounds, is appropriately considered a time of revitalization and renewal. Inspiration for this symbolism is everywhere you look.

From March 14th to the 27th, I had the privilege of accompanying the members of the Class of 2026 on their Civil Rights Trip. The trip, which departed right after spring break this year, is a capstone experience for Gordon’s eighth graders, an essential part of a multicultural curriculum that begins in Nursery and that integrates academic excellence, social and emotional learning, social justice, the arts, and athletics.

I knew about Gordon’s Civil Rights Trip long before I ever stepped foot onto our campus. This year’s trip marked the twenty-fifth time that Gordon had taken the eighth grade to Georgia and Alabama. That’s a quarter of a century of experiential learning focused on a critical part of American history that still goes untaught in many schools around the country. Almost two decades ago,

Gordon’s trip was a model for schools like the one at which I used to work, and over the years, the model has inspired other schools around the country, Gordon alumni, and Gordon past parents to design their own versions for a wide array of audiences—from middle school students to law students and judges. Gordon’s trip has not been a static experience, however. It has evolved over the years, as have the destinations that are so integral to understanding the past. Places like Atlanta, Georgia and Montgomery and Selma, Alabama hold important stories about our country’s past that need to be told, but they also act as bridges between that past and our very real present. The issues are persistent: access to quality education, economic opportunity, voting rights, equality before the law, human rights, dignity.

The trip evoked many powerful emotions for me. At the Equal Justice Initiative’s Legacy Museum, the exhibit featuring ceramic busts of kidnapped Africans whose unmarked graves are at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean broke my heart. I felt anger when we visited the Live Oak Cemetery, contested ground as it is, and it left me spiritually, emotionally, and psychologically challenged as the academic in me struggled to be objective about the hatred on display there. And I felt sadness, humility, gratitude, and pride walking over the Edmund Pettus Bridge, retracing the footsteps of those who sacrificed everything to march for voting rights on Bloody Sunday.

What impressed me most, however, was how our students engaged with every moment of the trip. Gordon eighth graders were active participants in every way—reading, taking notes, engaging with speakers, learning for learning’s sake, reflecting, supporting each other, exercising patience, showing grace—and I am beyond proud of them. I am also proud of and grateful to their teachers for preparing them so well for such an important experience. It was truly fitting, then, that as we descended the escalator at T.F. Green Airport on our way to baggage claim at the end of the trip on Friday afternoon, there were the proud and loving families of our eighth graders, waiting for them with open arms and cheering for a job well done. That’s when the tears finally slipped down my face. That was pure Gordon, our beloved community at its best.

As I reflect on this journey alongside our students and my colleagues, I find myself returning to the spirit of spring that surrounds us now. Just as the earth awakens after a long winter, quietly but persistently, so, too, does learning of this depth invite a kind of renewal within us. The Civil Rights Trip asks our students not only to look back, but to carry forward—to take what they have seen, felt, and understood and allow it to shape how they move through the world. It is, in many ways, an invitation to grow: in awareness, in empathy, in courage, and in commitment to justice.

This, to me, is the truest expression of revitalization and renewal, not only in nature, but in ourselves and in our community.

With joy, 

About the Civil Rights Trip
This year's trip, day by day