By Andrew ’22
When I entered Harvard-Westlake as a 7th grader, two things made me feel much more grown up than my twelve years of age. The first was weekend homework, something rarely seen in my grade school days. The second was the apparent lack of field trips. During elementary school, I would start each year by excitedly looking over the list of excursions planned for my class. When I had talked with HW students as an applicant, they said that field trips like the ones I had at elementary school weren’t common at Harvard-Westlake. After joining HW, however, I quickly realized that HW students have many opportunities to build community while exploring the world beyond Coldwater and North Faring.
The biggest off-campus event for students in grades 7 to 9 is the annual retreat. In October every year, students on the Lower School campus go on weeklong retreats with the rest of their class. Each outing is a great opportunity to build friendships for all three grades. For seventh graders, many first HW friends are made as the camp in El Capitan Canyon. For eight graders, exploring the nature and wildlife of Catalina Island helps create bonds with a new group of friends. And for ninth graders, rafting along the Colorado River is the perfect time to meet their 100 new classmates. While sophomores and juniors at the Upper School don’t have retreats, seniors traditionally go to Big Bear right before graduation to celebrate their high school experience.
In addition to these class-wide trips, many students explore the world as members of clubs and other interest groups. For example, as a Harvard-Westlake student, I’ve competed in regional tournaments with the Science Bowl club, done beach cleanups at Santa Monica with Heal the Bay, and performed music at various venues in Los Angeles with an outreach performance group. Additionally, one of the largest traditions at the Upper School is the Peer Support Scavenger Hunt. Peer Support is a confidential student-led support group at the Upper School, and its annual scavenger hunt is replete with wacky prompts that send participants all over campus and the nearby city looking to find the most bizarre objects and scenarios. Additionally, many HW sports teams, student leadership councils, and affinity groups organize exciting team-building retreats to escape rooms, Grand Central Market, and more.
The last category of “field trips” at Harvard-Westlake is an outing organized by an academic department. Through connections with alumni, parents, and industry leaders, teachers organize trips that complement the material students learn in class. Often, these excursions are designed to show students how they can pursue an academic subject in college and the professional world. At the middle school, for instance, I went on trips organized by the math department to the UCLA School of Engineering and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. On both these trips, HW alumni and parents talked to my classmates and I about their career journeys and research areas. Other off-campus opportunities are more academic. In 10th grade, students study the events of World War I in their European history courses. When I was taking the class, the history department organized a trip to a screening of 1917, the breathtaking film on WWI, for the entire grade.
In conclusion, off-campus trips are still an important way student at HW learn, foster relationships, and plan for their futures. The more involved students are at HW, the more opportunities they’ll have to participate in these exciting trips.
