What an adventure it was traveling to the National History Day state competition for a week with 20 teenagers! Some of it could be the script for a television comedy....
We started off getting stranded for 5 hours in the Dallas airport with our flight canceled. Luckily, we brought our own entertainment. Most memorably, some of the cheerleaders in the group did handsprings across the airport. (I knew then that it would be an interesting trip.)
Our most humorous experience - in retrospect - was the day we went to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C., my home away from home in D.C. (I'm a Mandel fellow there and have been involved with their programs for 6 years.) There was a Holocaust survivor signing copies of his book in the bookstore, and he took a liking to some of my students. So he invited us to come back later that day so he could talk with them! We were excited, but the problem was coordinating our schedules: the only time we could manage to get together was when my group was en route to the University of Maryland to register for the National History Day finals and set up the exhibits.
That explains why we arrived at the museum with 20 of us looking very conspicuous in our bright
purple Arizona shirts with the cactus on them (for the state's group picture later that day) and dragging bulky exhibits with us. Well, one of the projects (on the Bisbee deportations) included a 70-pound mining drill in a suitcase, which - to the suspicious eyes of the guards peering at the x-rays - looked a lot like a disassembled submachine gun. (The Holocaust Museum gets lots of threats from neo-Nazis....) So here I am with my arms and legs spread apart, being wanded by security, trying to say that there's a "logical" explanation, while the guards
are checking the drill for gunpowder residue, and people are backed up out the door.... Finally, they escorted that particular student and his drill to the check-in room, where people watched it nervously for the rest of our stay. (We were escorted out at the end of our visit.) At the same time as the drill-at-the-security-checkpoint crisis, I discovered that one of the students in a performance group that researched the Sobibor concentration camp uprising had put the names of the characters he played on the back of his shirt with fabric paint. So there in flourescent letters was emblazoned on his shirt "SS Commander." Oh great - just what we needed at this point - someone who looked like a Nazi sympathizer! I ordered him to walk backwards the whole time and to stay in the
center of the group of purple shirts. Luckily, we ARE welcome back there - though I think we are something of a legend.
Among the highlights of the trip:
- Charles, a 6 foot 7 inch basketball player, whose intellect and integrity are as big as his height, found a wallet with over $1300 in it and
returned it to its rightful owner. (I was so proud of him.)
- My students, even the normally shy ones, danced with a belly dancer in a wonderful Moroccan restaurant, where we had just been served a 6-course meal.
- One of my perky cheerleaders gave an impassioned commentary on the Darfur
genocide to the National History Day judges.
- Another of my students got a national special award ($750) for Best Project in Marine Corps History.
By the end of the trip, we were so exhausted that even the girls weren't doing
handsprings in Dallas. But it was a great time.