riverside junior high washington dc trip

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Washington, D.C. Trip Info

Welcome to the D.C. trip webpage! 

Dates of the trip: Tuesday, May 14, 2024 to Saturday, May 18, 2024

Please contact your school sponsors for questions about the trip:

Carriel Tour ID: 34702407

Adam Schweitzer: [email protected]

Tori Engel: [email protected]

Fulton Tour ID: 34482408

Shane Flaar: [email protected]

Katie Dollahon: [email protected]

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School Trips in DC: What Visitors Need to Know

Participating in one of the multi-day school trips in DC is a right-of passage for many 8th graders across the U.S. If you are not visiting with one of these groups but coming to DC between mid-March and mid-June, these are a few things you need to know.

What is school field trip season?

School trips in DC are a huge part of the local tourism industry. Most schools send eighth grade class trips. This is why you will also occasionally hear referred to as “eighth grade field trip season”. Eighth grade is usually the class that gets to come to DC because it’s a final reward before the kids head off to high school.

Trip Hacks DC offers tours specifically designed for school groups . We have led tours with students in fifth grade all the way up to 12th grade. Our tours are best for small schools who don’t pay for an all-inclusive package. For large schools, these services might make more sense.

When is school field trip season?

School group trips in DC typically happen at one of two times during the year. The big one is in the spring, roughly from mid-March through mid-June. There is also a secondary field trip season in the fall roughly from early October through Thanksgiving.

If you’re trying to avoid field trip season the months you want to consider for your trip are: December, January, and February in the winter, and July, August, and September in the summer. Most schools choose to come in the spring because it’s an end-of-the-school-year reward. Plus, the students get to spend all school year learning about social studies and history and then they get to come to DC and see things up close.

Fall field trip season is much less busy since most schools don’t want to do the trip at the beginning of the school year.

How will field trip season impact your trip?

The most important thing to know is that school groups travel together in large packs. So, if you are visiting the memorials, there might be four groups of 50 students or more at once. This can really change the feel of some of the sites, particularly smaller memorials like the Vietnam and Korean War memorials.

School groups are only in DC for a limited amount of time. They need to maximize that time as best as possible. That means that during the day they’re going to be at the sites that are only open from 10 to 5. This includes the museums and the other indoor sites. Then, after dinner, they are going to head out and tour the monuments and memorials. This is because there are not a lot of evening activities you can do with big groups of teenagers.  

The bottom line is that if you’re visiting during spring field trip season you’re going to be sharing those monuments and sites with a lot of other people.

Where do field trip groups eat?

As far as restaurants go, school trips groups in DC tend to stick to a limited number of places. For lunch they go to food courts. The food courts at Union Station, L’Enfant Plaza, the Reagan Building, and Pentagon City Mall are all popular choices. Food courts are ideal for school groups because they’re cheap and they give the students a lot of different choices. For dinner, they go to the inexpensive restaurants that can accommodate groups. This includes places such as the Hard Rock Cafe, Buca di Beppo, Carmine’s, and similar chain places.

Where do school groups stay?

School groups usually stay at suburban hotels because they travel on charter buses. Thus they do not need to be near Metro. Suburban hotels usually offer group rates to schools. Although, you will occasionally see school groups staying downtown, especially if they’re a small group who doesn’t have a charter bus. So if you plan to stay at a downtown hotel and eat at mostly local restaurants, you are probably not going to bump into too many of these groups at those places.

Coming to DC and want to book a tour? Trip Hacks DC was founded by Rob, a veteran tour guide in the Nation’s Capital. Trip Hacks DC provides tips, tricks and travel hacks for planning your trip; and guided tours to show you around once you get here. Our tours are family and school group friendly and our guides specialize in the major Washington, DC sites.  Click here to check out the upcoming tour options  and to book your tour here today!  Feel free to contact us if you have any tour questions

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Trip planning resources.

• DC Airports: a Guide to Navigating DCA, IAD and BWI
• The Ultimate Washington DC Travel Guide (2023)
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• The 5 Best Local Washington DC Tours
• Washington DC Trip Planning: Trip Hacks DC E-book
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Close Up Foundation’s Washington D.C. High School Program is a one-of-a-kind trip for students to experience their government in action.  During this six-day/five-night program, students make personal connections with the people, institutions, and iconic sites that embody our nation’s past and present.    

As students tour our nation’s capital and forge new, lasting friendships, they have the chance to:  

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School trips to D.C. are back in all their teenage glory

Students on the mall are a sight for sore eyes in our nation’s tourism-dependent capital.

On a cold November morning in D.C., a group of ninth-graders from Knoxville, Iowa, huddled together on a shady path near the Vietnam Veterans Memorial to listen to Sandy Brooks, their guide from EF Educational Tours. The 37-degree forecast did not deter a handful of boys from wearing shorts. About 50 yards behind the tour guide, a group of similar-looking students in matching white shirts ascended the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

“Everybody’s gotta scooch because this is a working sidewalk,” Brooks said, corralling fidgeting teens and the chaperones who were watching over their flock from the rear. A Southwest Airlines plane thundered overhead, all but drowning out the guide’s request. She told the kids to get used to it. “This is a flight path for Reagan National Airport,” she said, standing on a park bench so everyone could see and hear her better. Moments later, another plane roared past.

Tourism is gradually returning to D.C., a destination for visitors who come to sample the city’s history, architecture and network of free museums. The sight of Godzilla hoodies and neon lanyards on the National Mall spoke to another comeback: the return of the D.C. school trip.

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As vaccination rates rise and coronavirus cases decline, life in D.C. has started to look more how it did before the pandemic. That includes gaggles of middle-schoolers roaming around reopened museums and monuments, a welcome return for a local tourism industry devastated by a lack of visitors. According to an economic impact study shared by Destination DC , visitor spending between March 2020 and March 2021 plummeted by $6.1 billion, and the city lost $477 million in tax revenue as a result. In 2020, D.C. lost an estimated $370 million from canceled conferences alone.

For decades, countless students, teachers and parents have come to D.C. from all over the country to learn about their nation’s beginnings. The pandemic took that opportunity away, but interest in the rite of passage has not waned. EF Educational Tours reports it has seen record demand for 2023 trips.

The 40 or so students in Brooks’s EF tour group were originally scheduled to visit D.C. the year before, when they were in eighth grade. “Covid hit my seventh grade year,” student Madi Day-Suhr said. “We weren’t sure about what was going to happen. We kept postponing.”

Knoxville Middle School teacher Sara Finnegan offered to take her former students — including her twin sons, now high school freshmen — this fall.

“It’s kind of surreal,” student Janie Maasdam said. “It feels like it’s just like one big adventure.”

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Their journey began with a rough call time for the flights from Iowa to Baltimore.

“I woke up at like 4:25 because we had to be at the airport by 5:30 and I still had stuff to pack,” Maasdam said. “I know some people get up early for sports, but all of my practices are after school, so I’ve never really done that. … It was definitely a smack to the face.”

Some people had their flights delayed, while others made it to D.C. without any real drama (unless you count the social drama, like who was being annoying on the plane). Brooks adjusted their itinerary accordingly.

Improvising is in the job description for a seasoned tour guide, but the pandemic has added new hurdles. Brooks, who started guiding groups again in June, said the biggest issue has been finding food options to accommodate big groups when so many restaurants close earlier than before.

“I took 50 kids to Shake Shack last night — imagine that,” Brooks said.

Brooks said she also misses some tour opportunities that are still off the table. The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum is not accepting large groups because of coronavirus concerns, and tours of the Capitol have been paused since the pro-Trump riot on Jan. 6.

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Students are still finding ways to have a good time in D.C. Maasdam, for example, splurged on two orders of fries and a Sugar Plum Fairy milkshake at Shake Shack the other night, which “is probably not the best decision considering I’m lactose intolerant,” she said.

“It feels really fun, it doesn’t really feel like school,” student Ezra Schmidt said. “The only thing that feels like school is you’re doing it with your friends, which is a good thing.”

Like many visitors, Schmidt and his classmates were surprised at how big the monuments look in person compared with how they look in photos and movies. “And you can see the symbolism in the details a lot better when you’re there in person,” he said.

Or as student Kyl Bauer summed it up, D.C. turned out to be “epic,” he said. “I was going on about how all these memorials feel like they’re made for giants, which I mean, in theory, I guess they are. The statues inside are big.”

At the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, some students observed the names of the war’s casualties. Some looked for family members and connections they knew were etched into the black granite.

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“A lot of the bonding is fun, but I think [the Vietnam Memorial] was probably the best time so far,” Day-Suhr said. “It gave us a lot of mixed emotions, like my heart was heavy.”

Then it was off to the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial and around the Tidal Basin to the Franklin D. Roosevelt Memorial. After the teens rubbed the bronze sculpture ears of Roosevelt’s dog Fala for good luck, they power walked to the Jefferson Memorial. They had managed to score hard-to-get tickets to the National Museum of African American History and Culture and didn’t have time to waste.

“The African American Museum here — it is phenomenal so we’re not going to race through this next section, but we’re also not going to lollygag,” Brooks told the group. “Remember, we got into the dillydally talk last night? No lollygagging, no dillydallying.”

On the bus, the tour continued along with teenage shenanigans.

“Elliott, all 17 of your girlfriends are calling you from the back of the bus,” a student said.

Shenanigans, of course, are part of the package of a school trip. Aside from the serious educational moments at memorials and inside museums, a D.C. school trip is memorable for the lighter parts, such as the fun of staying in a hotel with your friends and classmates.

“The first thing we did [at the hotel] was set up dorm rules,” student Jason Vinsick said. “No singing, no FaceTime, no listening to music or videos without headphones.”

Photos: International travelers make their journey to the U.S. as borders reopen

Those tempted to test the dorm rules risked getting kicked out of the dorm (although leaving assigned rooms at night was forbidden). The excitement kept some kids up late, although there was a price to pay in the morning.

“ We gotta wake up at 6,” Bauer said. “We meant to set our alarm for 5:55, but our alarm did not go off. I finally woke up after Tim knocked on the door like 15 times. I definitely felt bad about that.”

The in-person adventure was a welcome foil to the mostly virtual doldrums of the previous year.

“[Virtual school] was definitely depressing in its own way because … it made us all inactive, we were pretty much just wallowing in our own rooms,” Vinsick said. “Nobody did schoolwork, I hate to admit it. But doing it over Zoom is pretty tough.”

Groups like Brooks’s benefit more of D.C. than just the tour companies and museum gift shops. Seeing their return is a huge relief for people like William, a weekend T-shirt vendor on Constitution Avenue who spoke on the condition that his last name be withheld to protect his full-time job.

William said that before the pandemic, around 75 buses would come through the area a day, and “the kids buy.” He hopes that as more children get vaccinated, more parents will let them travel on school trips to D.C.

“That’s what we need, those buses,” he said. “Not just us, but everybody here eats off tourism.”

About this story

Editing by Amanda Finnegan and Gabe Hiatt . Photo editing by Monique Woo and Annaliese Nurnberg . Copy editing by Paola Ruano. Design and development by Katty Huertas.

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