Travel Study Experience Deepens Learning

Posted on 04/30/2012

Students from grades 6-8 recently returned from a 4-day travel study adventure in southwestern Minnesota and South Dakota.

The months of pre-trip study and ongoing curriculum content during the trip prepared students for each of the stops they made with history, first-person accounts and context.  The experiences students had visiting such places as Pipestone National Monument, Sinte Gleska University's Heritage Center, the Stronghold Unit of Badlands National Park, the Oglala Lakota College History Center and the site of the Wounded Knee massacre and mass grave will surely stay with them forever. 

Perhaps more critical, however, were the thoughtful, informative and moving conversations they had with leaders like Dwayne Stenstrom, Andrea Martinez, Marilyn Pourier, Charlie White Buffalo, Corey Yellow Boy, Leonard Crow Dog and Alex White Plume.

Travel study is a critical element of Southside's middle school curriculum.  Students typically travel to northern Minnesota in the fall and a neighboring state in the spring.  Additionally, every three years, a 10-day voyage brings students through the American South learning about and from leaders of the Civil Rights Movement.