High School New Orleans Trip!

~By Aili

Obsidian's much-anticipated trip to New Orleans, Louisiana was a big hit.

The high schoolers spent months fundraising for the trip through an email campaign and a student-produced banquet dinner and silent auction, as well as a designer shoe sale. The impetus for the trip was to visit the Whitney Plantation Museum, which they read about in Clint Smith's How the Word is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America.

The band had previously studied Nikole Hannah-Jones' 1619 Project: A New Origin Story. After all the careful preparation, the band set off, and although they encountered multiple travel snafus, they all made it safely to New Orleans. During their visit, they stayed in the French Quarter and learned about the history of the city through a visit to the New Orleans Jazz Museum/Old US Mint, as well as a highly engaging tour with Mikhala Iversen (All Bout Dat Tours). Their visit to the Whitney Plantation Museum brought the legacy of slavery into clear view, teaching lessons beyond those they could have learned in the classroom alone. Learners also got a ghostly tour of key film and television landmarks throughout the French Quarter. 

Finally, it goes without saying that an equal travel thrill was sampling the many cultural dishes of New Orleans, such as gumbo, beignets, and po boys.