At the beginning of the day, freshmen class assembled in Spaulding Auditorium to listen to head of school, Mr. Hereford, and biology teacher (as well as wife), Ms. Whalen, who were in New Orleans at the time of Hurricane Katrina, talk about their evacuation story and how they helped out the education community. They evacuated to Houston, Texas and having little to do but watch the terrible news of the storm on TV, Mr. Hereford looked for something to keep him occupied. He found a very much needed “job” for both him and Ms. Whalen. They set up phone numbers and email addresses to aid and communicate with students unable to go to their flooded schools or houses. They helped by working to enroll these students into different schools. What started out as two people trying to help, increased to a dozen volunteers working out of an office and receiving 1,000 names of students wanting to participate in the program. When Mr. Hereford was talking about how he and Ms. Whalen dealt with the disaster, he said, “You never know how you will react in a stressful situation until you are in one.”
After hearing their stories, everyone watched two movies: The Beasts of the Southern Wild and When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts. The Beasts of the Southern Wild is about young six year old Hushpuppy living with her father in a place called “The Bathtub” located on a small island off the coast of New Orleans. Her father gets sick and the ice caps begin to melt causing the animals known as the aurochs to float their way towards Hushpuppy. When Hushpuppy encounters these animals that everyone is afraid of, she tells them that they are her friends and should go away.
Hushpuppy’s father dies shortly after and just like he asked her, she places her father on a boat and sets him on fire. Since the movie When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts is four hours, the freshman class only saw the first hour. In the first hour of the movie there was people talking about what had happened before, during, and after Hurricane Katrina.
By the time the class saw both movies, things were running a little behind schedule and the group hurried onto the bus to travel to the Palace Grill. There, the class had a variety of delicious Cajun and Creole food. The main items that students ate on the menu were: The Big Easy Po Boy, Blackened Chicken Sandwich, Jambalaya Pasta, Mardi Gras Vegetarian Pasta, and Plantation Chicken Salad. After eating the main course, students moved on to eating dessert called the Louisiana Bread Pudding Souffle. “I picked the Big Easy Po Boy because they have things that I like inside of them and the flavor makes my tongue happy,” said freshmen Jack Stein.
When the clock struck 1:30 p.m., a group photo was taken in front of the restaurant commemorating the meal and day itself.
When the class returned to Laguna, for the concluding portion of the day, there was a video chat held with Caroline Fayard, the BP Oil Spill Plaintiff’s lawyer and US Senate Candidate. She was interviewed by Oliver Heyer and Hayley Bankhead to which she responded — discussing the BP Oil Spill and the negative effects the oil had on the environment. Reflecting on the day, freshman Alex Koke says, “I enjoyed the day out, trying the New Orleans styled food and getting a sense of the culture that we had been learning and writing about during our second semester was a really cool experience.”
