Middle School Field Trips Span the Globe

Concord Middle School Principal Lynne Beattie requested permission from the School Committee for a number of trips for sixth through eighth-graders at the Tuesday night meeting.

The first is to a camp in Tuftenboro, N.H. for sixth-graders that is planned for mid-September. The two buildings of the school, Sanborn and Peabody, will stay at Camp Merrowvista for two nights each in a bonding experience as they start middle school.

Approximately 200 students will make the team-building trip at a cost of $225 each. The students stay in spare cabins and play sports in groups of 10 supervised by a Merrowvista group leader.

The middle school has brought in incoming students to New Hampshire for 10 years.

"The trip provides an excellent opportunity for students to bond with each other and with their teachers," the school administration noted.

Next year, Beattie is requesting a trip on a much larger scale: to Xi'an China for about 20 seventh-graders for 12 days. The cost is $3,300 and the students will miss three school days during the April 14 to 25, 2011 timeframe.

The seventh-graders are scheduled to fly to Beijing where their sightseeing will begin. They will visit the Beijing Opera, the Beijing Zoo and the Great Wall. They are touring restaurants and other cultural sites.

Beattie wrote that seventh-graders study ancient China.

"In addition the whole focus of the seventh-grade year is getting students to look outside their own experiences and discover new perspectives," she wrote.

The trip includes an exchange with the Sunshine Middle School in Xi'an and a home stay there. Students will sit in on classes at the Sunshine School.

The trip ends in Shanghai before flying back. Student travelers are expected to present to their social studies class about their trip.

Eighth-graders are scheduled to accompany teacher Mitchell Stern on a field trip to Washington D.C. for four days in late April, 2011. Two hundred students will make the trip at a cost of $729 and will miss four school days.

While in the nation's capital, they will lay a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and visit Arlington National Cemetery and the Holocaust Museum and Ford's Theater where President Lincoln was assassinated.

They will also visit the Smithsonian Museums and the Vietnam, Korean War and World War II memorials.

Eighth-graders have gone to Washington for 16 years.