Dani See

Andrea Zani, via a kind reader:

Three days after the most recent Madison school year ended, Toki Middle School teacher Dani See was back on a bus. It wasn’t a yellow school bus, but a fancy coach bus, one of two that was taking 58 students and six staff chaperones on the school’s annual eighth-grade trip to Washington, D.C.

For See, it was the 20th consecutive year she was making the trip as its coordinator and tour director. The six-day trip takes students on a whirlwind tour of the nation’s capital, with additional stops at Gettysburg National Military Park in Pennsylvania and Virginia’s Colonial Williamsburg. It reinforces the social studies, civics and history curricula of eighth grade in a way no classroom work can, See said.

“I tell the kids and parents that my D.C. trip safeguards our heritage and our future by providing a first-hand understanding of history,” she said. “(It) creates a ‘hands-on’ approach to learning.”