In March 2020, COVID-19 obstructed all in-person school activities. Four years later, class trips remain a rarity despite the school curriculum resuming and adapting properly. But those four years weren’t wasted. After years of patient waiting and careful preparation, class trips are beginning to return to their norm, with several already planned for summer break.
This summer, photography, ceramics and film classes will be taking a Fine Arts trip to Italy, which will be one of the most significant class trips since the pandemic ended.
Photography instructor and Director of Student Travel Scott Hunt believes that class trips are vital to one’s experience of the arts and plans to establish these trips as a new tradition.
“I’ve led photography trips all over the world, and it was one of the things that motivated me to become the director of student travel,” Hunt said. “Those experiential opportunities are critical.”
Before COVID, class trips were regular events as students’ schedules had numerous opportunities for them in nearly every class, including photography, language and history.
“In one summer we had five international trips,” Hunt said. “While that was probably a little too much in retrospect, COVID was a hard restart.”
Hunt had plans for a visual arts trip prior to the pandemic and envisioned it to be in coordination with the choir trip, referring to it as “the arts summer.” For this year, the trip does not include drawing and painting; however, Middle and Upper School art instructor Kate Wood will chaperone this year to again experience and consider the inclusion of her class as well.
“If the trip is successful and popular, then the trip would become a part of the fabric of the St. Mark’s experience, like the choir and Pecos trip,” Hunt said.
The only other international Fine Arts trips following the pandemic have been a choir trip and Middle School trip to Sicily, although neither of them have occurred this past summer. However, Hunt is gearing up for a multitude of trips during the summers of 2024 and 2025.
This year, there will be 24 domestic trips and three international trips, marking the return to the unique experience of international travel for Marksmen.
“In the summer of 2025, we are going to do the D-Day Normandy trip again, and we are also in discussions about the possibility of a language trip during the summer,” Hunt said. “We are getting back.”
