Each fall and spring, Christchurch School students and faculty take grade-level immersion trips. The three-day adventures integrate skills and content from all classes. Students carefully document their experiences with notations, diagrams, and reflections in their “passports.”
In the fall, ninth-graders explore our local area, and 11th-graders investigate Tangier Island and Port Isobel. In the spring, 10th-graders explore the headwaters of the Rappahannock River watershed, and seniors explore the Potomac River and Washington, D.C.
The ninth-graders never traveled more than 15 miles from campus. Throughout the exploration, students contemplated the trip’s big question: “How can an appreciation and awareness of one’s local place help form a sense of self and community?” They investigated the Dragon Run, Urbanna and Urbanna Creek, and the mouth of the Rappahannock River. These three places are distinctly different but very much connected and interdependent. They each have amazing natural and social resources that, when understood as a whole, very much speak to the realities and significance of our local place. The trip was physically and mentally demanding. The class camped, canoed long distances, night hiked, and interviewed local residents and businesses.
