Gilroy – After Ron Ayala and Sam Navarez returned from a week-long trip to Washington, the two teachers spent two hours on the phone blabbing about their idea for next year’s eighth grade trip.
But who can blame the two men for being so energized upon returning from a trip they’d been talking about for years that managed to be such a success?
Both teachers were a bit nervous the teens would behave like, well, average middle schoolers, but they were pleasantly surprised to see the teens morph into mature adults while traipsing through serious historical sites such as Arlington National Cemetery, the Holocaust Memorial Museum and war memorials
“The community needs to give them an applause because they represented the community well,” said Navarez, a U.S. history teacher at Brownell Middle School. “That’s where we saw the true nature of our students. … Their only complaint was that they wanted to stay longer.”
When the students visited the Vietnam War memorial they were respectful and inquisitive and at the World War II memorial they politely asked veterans about their experiences. None posed the bad-mannered question, “did you kill anyone?”
“The kids were excellent,” said Ayala, who teaches at Ascencion Solorsano Middle School. “They were little adults. They really stepped up to our expectations.”
Ayala and Navarez began discussing the prospect of visiting Washington when they were both teaching at South Valley Middle School. The plan sat on a shelf until last summer when they met a representative from WorldStrides, an educational travel company.
The teachers had initially planned a joint trip but they hadn’t anticipated so much student interest. A total of 37 Solorsano and 16 Brownell students ended up on the trip. The groups were on the East Coast at the same time but on different schedules.
They visited all the notable monuments and traveled to Williamsburg, Va. and Mount Vernon. The eighth-graders saw all the statues, buildings and documents they’d learned about in class in person, but it was Ayala who was in awe the entire time. Although he’s been teaching history for 29 years, the educator had yet to step foot in our nation’s capitol.
“I think I was more excited than the kids,” he said with a smile.
