Before Scranton High School students knew who the next president of the United States would be, they made a decision. They wanted to see history, regardless of who would recite the oath on Monday.
“It's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity … either if it was Kamala (Harris) or (Donald) Trump, I just think it's a wonderful sight to see,” senior Henry Bartlebaugh said. “I'll probably never see it happen again in person, so I think it's a great experience for everybody, including myself.”
Follow along: Scranton High School students will share their experience at the inauguration with WVIA at wvia.org and on WVIA-FM.
Henry and 30 of his classmates will board buses before sunrise on Saturday and head to Washington, D.C. For four days, the lessons discussed in the social studies classrooms of Sean Curry and Jerry Skotleski and others will come alive.
"I take multiple history classes here. I'm excited to see and to be able to look at stuff in the museums and the monuments and say, ‘Wow, I remember learning about that,’ or just to see things more up close and personal,” junior Juliet Michael said.
The students will be in the crowd as Donald Trump becomes the 47th president at noon on Monday.
“It's a moment in history that I probably won't ever see again,” senior Addison Bohn said. “It's really a privilege.”
Curry and Skotleski first took students to a presidential inauguration in 2005, when George W. Bush was sworn in for his second term. The teachers have planned a trip every inauguration since then, except for 2021, when the pandemic forced students to miss Scranton native Joe Biden’s ceremony.
“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for the kids," Curry said. "I mean, we've made it a five-times-in-a-lifetime opportunity situation for us, but for the kids, this might be the only shot they have to go and to see something this historic and to witness the ceremony and the oath that the Founding Fathers put in place. It's a special moment.”
The group will visit museums, monuments, tour the Capitol, see a show and meet people from around the country.
“It's going to be pretty amazing to see all the monuments I've always learned about at every grade level and to be able to go to museums and learn about even new stuff that I haven't learned in class,” senior Joshua Leonori said.
Students paid about $900 to go on the trip, and a fundraiser on Election Day helped defray costs.
“We don't just walk over to the Lincoln Memorial and say, ‘Here, go take pictures.’ We make sure that when we get to every monument, we tell the students the history behind it, the purpose of it, what it's done, the events that have happened there, the cool intricacies of each of the monuments and memorials,” Skotleski said. “We've spent years studying some of this to make sure that when you get this walking tour, you're actually learning something, and we take a lot of pride in what we've studied over the years to make this really worthwhile.”
The students committed to the trip a year ago, before the parties chose their nominees.
“Ever since they announced the trip, I was so excited to go, and I immediately hopped on it,” senior Emma Kearney said. “No matter who won, it's still a once-in-a-lifetime event.”
Skotleski says each inauguration is unique, beyond the person taking the oath. The group has watched from different locations each year, sometimes with tickets secured through a legislator, and other times from a place along the National Mall. Each time, the teachers and students have talked to those around them, learning more about their backgrounds and what brought them to the nation’s capital.
For Skotleski and Curry, the trip provides another way to teach.
"The cool thing is we get to inform, but not influence. These are kids who we want to be, not only good citizens of their community, but like people who are actively involved and informed. But our job isn't to influence," Curry said. "Their political affiliation is completely down to how they feel about the stuff that we teach them and their own personal situation. And that's kind of the unique thing that we get to do. We get to knock down the walls of our classroom and get out. ... It's a privilege to be able to be there and to be able to take the students with us.”
