Scott Wilson explains the details of the 2105 Europe specialized specifically for Central and its honor’s history students. This is the first trip that focuses specifically on historic landmarks, in particular ones affiliated with WWII.

“This is the first one. This is our first overseas history trip. I’ve helped chaperone Ms. Ryan who’s the former Latin teacher, I’ve been on two of her trips to Italy as an extra chaperone. But this one is a history focus instead of cultural, language based. This one is history themed. We’ve been talking about doing this for maybe 8-10 years and now we’re finally going for it,” he said.

Wilson explains that the trip was offered to every student in Honors or AP social studies classes. The teachers felt they would have the most interest in attending.

“We invited all honors social studies students, people who have a higher interest in history which is a pretty significant number of people in this school. We felt those would be the students that would be most interested in a trip that had a specific history theme like World War II.”

Wilson says that they will be gone for 10 days, and packing each day full of something the students will be interested in.

“It will be a 10 day trip, two days of flying, one at either end. We’ll be flying to London and spend two days there. Then we will go to Portsmouth where they have a museum for D-Day. From there we’ll take a ferry across the English Channel. Then we’ll spend two days in Normandy about the D-Day invasion, there are several excellent museums that we will be seeing. Then we’ll do a day in Paris, Eiffel Tower, Louvre, Notre Dame. Then we will have a day about World War I in Northeast France, and then from there we will go to the Bastogne about the battle of the bulge. We will spend two days in that specific area. Lastly, we will be in Cologne, Germany for a day, then Berlin for a day. Then we will fly home,” Wilson said.

Wilson says that 36 kids was the maximum amount able to go on the trip with him, but many more showed enthusiasm.

“We’re taking 36, which was our limit. The price for each student is about $4200. It was first come, first serve. Those who had their deposit and enrollment form first got on the list. We took the first 36 then began filling out a waiting list,” he says.
Wilson explains that the trip is not only focused on relating to the curriculum that they’re teaching, but they’re also visiting sites where former central graduates were laid to rest.

“We are going to visit several cemeteries with Central graduates who were killed in World War I or II and that will give us a chance to talk about what they did in the war. That will be very special; it will add a Central High flavor to it. The historic sites are not necessarily geared specifically towards Central, but we’ll be able to talk about what those men from earlier Central classes did in the war and that will be pretty cool. We wanted to take Central students; we wanted our students to be exposed to these great sites and museums that are not normally offered on standard European trips so we developed a customized trip with the company that is putting it together for us,” he said.

All in all, the trip focuses on Central and praises its former graduates. This trip is the first of its kind and will surely have many more to come.