Kids in the Capital: How The 8th Grade Field Trip to D.C. Came to Be
More than 1 million eighth graders visit Washington D.C. yearly with their classmates. How did it all begin?
If you’ve been to Washington, DC, between March and June, you’ve undoubtedly seen swarms of them scattered around the National Mall and blooming with vibrant colors—a scenic backdrop to some of the nation’s most iconic landmarks.
No, not the cherry blossoms. It’s the middle school T-shirt, the unofficial signal that spring has sprung in the nation’s capital.
Every year, more than one million eighth graders—about one in every three—can be seen running up and down the National Mall in matching school-colored tees, pacing awkwardly in the Smithsonian, taking lunch at the L’Enfant Plaza and Pentagon City food courts, and racking up soda fountain tabs at the Hard Rock Cafe.
A field trip that started as a business idea has since evolved into a decades-long tradition, bolstering economies and creating entirely new ones. And while it’s become the subject of debate in school districts from Ohio to Massachusetts, in DC, it remains both a fact of life and a total vibe.
You can read the full story on Thrillist, where it was published earlier today.
How the story came to be
I had the idea to write this after chatting with Laura and some other friends about trips we took growing up. One trip led to another, and we landed on an eighth-grade field trip to D.C.
How was it possible that our schools, from across the Midwest and East Coast, all took a version of the same trip in the same grade?
I started researching (googling student education, student tourism, etc., scouring Reddit, asking friends), all in an attempt to find the earliest mention of the trip organizing. (Full disclosure: I didn’t go on this trip because Derek, my older brother by five years, wasn’t allowed to go following 9/11. So I stayed home and played video games that week and it was … awesome?)
Finally, a lead: Phil Wendel, a former U.S. history teacher from Highland Park, Illinois, who organized a trip back with his eighth-grade class in 1964. (Ironically, Phil was born in Evanston, where I call home today.) WorldStrides, the company that morphed out of the travel company that Phil formed in the late 1960s (Lakeland Tours), did a blog post on him from a few years ago.
I couldn’t find Phil’s contact information anywhere (one of the perks of being in your 80s seems to be that your digital footprint is often pretty small). But I found out that Phil also started a chain of fitness clubs in northern Virginia in the 1980s, which he seemed to still be a part of (the video below, from two years ago, helped solidify that fact).
Phil could beat me up, I have no doubt about that.
I contacted the company via a contact form on its website and asked if they could connect me with Phil. Someone got back to me within a day, and by the end of the week, I was Zooming with Phil, who called me from a high-rise in Charlottesville, Virginia.
What a life! A teacher, an entrepreneur, a fitness buff, a parent, a grandparent, and much more. He filled me in on student travel post-WWII, why he decided to start organizing trips, how his business grew, and the legacy he had on student travel and tourism.
Phil connected me with his son-in-law, Eric, who works in student travel with Grand Classroom, another educational student travel company. The world of student travel is a small one, and a lot of it seems to be based in Charlottesville.
I connected with a few tourism outlets in the D.C. area — namely, DC Destination — who helped provide some context to the number of eighth graders who visit the nation’s capital each year. Additionally, I reached out to malls (where many students go to eat in their food courts), local universities (to talk to academics about tourism trends), a middle school teacher from when I was in school (to get some good stories), and bus companies (which charter students around D.C. when they’re there). Not too much came from these cold emails and calls, but I kept at it.
One thing that popped up in some conversations was the Hard Rock Cafe. So many people mentioned it! I got in touch with a sales and marketing rep from Hard Rock Cafe Washington, D.C., who could not have been more helpful and interesting.
My favorite fact included in the story is that the Hard Rock Cafe in Washington, D.C., welcomes some 40,000-50,000 eighth graders every year.
I did more research and interviews, and eventually, I felt I had enough. Well, that’s not entirely true: I will go down rabbit holes and convince myself that information is worth including until my eyeballs nearly wilt in my skull.
I wrote a 2,400-word article, which was cut to around 1,500 for publication. Fair, especially since that was what was agreed upon!
It was published on May 24, just as students wrap up their field trips to D.C. before the end of the school year (late May/early June).
You can read the full story on Thrillist.
Such an interesting piece!