The week of April 10 was probably one of the busiest in field trip history, tallying five separate trips to four different locations across the eastern coast of the United States. Advanced Placement English 12 journeyed to Charleston, South Carolina, to reinforce the teaching of The Lords of Discipline by Pat Conroy. The orchestra drove to Boston to compete in the Boston Heritage Festival. The concert band and the Madrigals went to Richmond to compete in the Dixie Classic Festival. Lastly, Advanced Placement Physics 1 and Intensified Physics went to Kings Dominion to gain a better understanding of the laws of motion and forces on the rides.

In years past, students who have attended the Charleston trip have been able to meet the author and gain a direct experience from the book they read in class; unfortunately, this year Conroy was unavailable. Despite this setback, everything went very well and everyone had a great time. The trip was complete with fancy dinners, carriage rides, a water aerobics lesson from English teacher Theresa Eiserman, boat rides at sunset, dolphins and much more.

According to chaperone and English teacher Martha Axiotis, it was the best trip she had ever attended.

“Everywhere we went, the people that we met thought that the Yorktown students were the best high school students that they had ever met, so we carried our reputation quite well,” said Axiotis.

Yorktown carried its reputation everywhere it went that week. Over in Boston, the orchestra won every prize available to them in the Boston Heritage Festival, including a sweepstakes award for best music department and gold ratings for being first place in their class.

“The purpose of this trip was to compete in the Boston Heritage Festival. When we go to these such things, I always add value through various cultural events, so in addition to performing on their own, they attended concerts at the Boston Symphony and the New England Conservatory, and visited three museums,” said Orchestra Director Thomas Hartman.

In addition, Hartman says one of the most memorable aspects of the trip was the rehearsal they had on the day before the competition in a beautiful Unitarian church in Redding, Massachusetts. It came complete with a nice venue and lovely acoustics; it was an overall very welcoming place.

“This involves learning how to take music which you can perform in the relative comfort of your own school in your own auditorium, and take it on the road and learn how to perform in different circumstances, and still perform at the advanced level,” said Hartman.

Also playing at an advanced level in a different circumstance was Yorktown’s concert band, accompanied by the Madrigals. They attended the Dixie Classic Festival in Richmond, Virginia, to compete against schools across the country and each did extremely well. Both received superior ratings for their classifications, and the Madrigals soprano section received a sectional award for their achievements.

“Educationally, the best part for us is the students get really in depth clinics and master classes with university faculty from around the country,” said Band Director Brian Bersh. “They get to perform on these national stages where they are able to receive feedback that is usually reserved for musicians who are focused on music as a career at a university level. So they are able to see themselves on these college campuses or on these stages working with the best conductors in the country. That’s a really valuable experience. It’s also an incredible experience for building the community within the ensemble. We all have this shared experience now of what it means to achieve excellence and strive for these performances which these students have been working on for so long.”

Both musical groups worked extremely hard for their placings. The Madrigals had to compete without some of their strongest voices, but this allowed everyone else to step it up a little more and become a little more self-reliant.

“It gave us more confidence in what we were doing,” said Madrigal member and sophomore Thomas Miller. “It was really positive. We didn’t see the superior rating coming, and it was pretty invigorating for all of us.”

Chorus teacher and Madrigals Director Roger Oliver was very happy with the outcome of the weekend and loved being on stage with his choir to receive the award.

“We were able to do a very good job with the group we had, and for me that was very important,” said Oliver.

Also pleased with her field trip, Physics teacher Deborah Waldron thoroughly enjoyed the AP 1 and Intensified Physics excursion to Kings Dominion in Doswell, Virginia.

“Amusement parks are basically huge physics laboratories. They’ve got all the big scale equipment that matches exactly what we teach and learn about in introductory physics. Not only can you measure it, but you can feel the things, like what does it feel like when this is happening, what does it feel like when you go over the top of a loop,” said Waldron.

Students collected data from a variety of coasters and other rides with plans to do data analysis and calculations when they returned back to school. Of course, this involved riding the rides and enjoying the beautiful day in a nearly empty amusement park.

“I think the most important thing they can learn from it is that the physics we do inside the classroom actually does relate to the bigger world outside,” said Waldron. “It’s nice to be able to show that physics is totally applicable to real life, and that it’s really fun. We just hope that they will never be able to go to an amusement park again without thinking about all this physics stuff.”

After traveling to Charleston, Boston, Richmond or Doswell, all these students gained valuable and unforgettable experiences.