Seven Marshall County High School students and three middle school students will have the opportunity to visit and explore historic US sites like Gettysburg and Philadelphia this winter, thanks to a grant from an Oklahoma foundation.
The annual East Coast History Tour is an educational travel experience funded in full by the Five Mile Children’s Foundation. Students are selected for the trip based on their performance on a document-based short essay question. Students from eight schools, including Marshall County High School, have been invited to participate this year.
Stops on the tour also include such historically important sites as Colonial Williamsburg, Washington D.C. and Monticello. This is Marshall County’s second year participating in the program.
The students selected to attend this year’s tour are, from MCHS: Hunter Bomgardner, Taylor Canup, Katherine Fisk, Anna Noles, Seth Adams, Olivia Lepisto and Katelyn Thomason. The three middle school students selected are Jackson Boone, Jett Sealock and Riley Smith.
Rebecca Sealock, MCHS social studies teacher and trip coordinator, hopes that students come away from the trip with a better understanding of the history of the U.S. and of the founding fathers as real individuals who persevered through adversity, flaws and personal failings to achieve extraordinary things, instead of larger-than-life figures from a textbook.
“Really, the hope is that seeing Washington, Jefferson, Henry, Franklin and other founders in this light, the children will aspire to try extraordinary things themselves, and be inspired to commit or contribute to public service,” said Sealock, who has been involved with the tour since 1997.
The East Coast History Tour, funded by the Five Mile Children’s Foundation out of Quapaw, Okla., was created in 1992 as an opportunity for talented students to learn more about the ideals surrounding the founding of the United States.
The foundation’s manager, John Archer, and the initial trustees established the fund with the hope that the students selected for the tour would be motivated to become leaders in their local communities—and perhaps even lead at the state or national level.
The East Coast History Tour will kick off Dec. 1, with students returning December 10.