Junior Class Trip topics and locations

Dear Colleagues,

Thought you might enjoying knowing where the junior class trips are headed this year. Feel free to reach out to Chris if any of these topics resonate with work that your students are doing. I imagine there will be ways to connect our juniors with your students.

Best,
Mark

 

Colleagues,

After delivering their place-based research proposals (their “pitches,” as they’ve come to be known) last week, the juniors found out this week where they’d be headed in April for their trips. The below note went out to families today. Thank you (endlessly) to the faculty trip leaders below for shepherding students to this point and for the work ahead in bringing these trips to life.
Please don’t hesitate to reach out with thoughts or questions (or even, as is sometimes the case, connections you may have in NYC or in these trip locations to work being done around these topics).
All the best,
Chris

———- Forwarded message ———
From: Chris Keimig <ckeimig@lrei.org>
Date: Thu, Dec 5, 2019 at 1:54 PM
Subject: Announcement: Junior Class Trip topics and locations
To: Parents-class-of-2021 <parents-class-of-2021@lrei.org>
Cc: Phil Kassen <pkassen@lrei.org>, Allison Isbell <aisbell@lrei.org>, Margaret Magee <mpaul@lrei.org>, Manjula Nair <mnair@lrei.org>
Dear junior families,

We are so pleased to be able to announce the next phase of the Junior Class Trip! After a process in which our students researched and advocated for a host of place-based research topics, the juniors have ultimately formed six small groups (10-12 students per group), each of which will study a different socio-political issue over the course of the year, culminating in a week-long place-based research trip in April (4/20-4/24).

Each group will travel to a location that has been proposed by students as a place where this topic is most relevant and immediate–places where (as founder of the Equal Justice Initiative Bryan Stevenson urges us to do in his speech on how to change the world that served as a framing text for our work together this year) we can:

  • get proximate to these issues and the innovative work being done to address them
  • examine multiple perspectives in order to challenge easy narratives and assumptions
  • find reasons to remain hopeful by learning from those driving change in their own communities, and
  • embrace discomfort as we push outside of our comfort zones and into the unfamiliar.

The topics and locations for this year’s trips are as follows:

Immigration & Border Policy: El Paso, Texas
Trip Leaders: Allison Isbell and Michel de Konkoly Thege

Criminal Justice & Mass Incarceration: Miami, Florida
Trip Leaders: Manjula Nair and Calvin Walds

Gun Control: Austin, Texas
Trip Leaders: Jonathan Segal and Hannah Miller

Climate Change, Water Pollution, & Animal Justice: Seattle, Washington
Trip Leaders: Pat Higgiston and Jess Prohias-Gardiner

Reproductive Rights & Sexual Assault: Tuscaloosa, Alabama
Trip Leaders: Kara Luce and Shafeiq Baksh

Rural Communities: Opioids & the Decline of Coal: McDowell County, West Virginia
Trip Leaders: Ann Carroll and Chris Keimig

Please note that there will be a pre-trip informational meeting for all junior families the evening of Monday, April 13, at 40 Charlton St. In the meantime, please don’t hesitate to reach out with any questions or thoughts.

All the best,