On March 22, four Laguna Blanca students, two Dos Pueblos students, one Brentwood School student (a school in Los Angeles), and one San Marcos student took a redeye flight to Washington DC to be a part of the huge “March for our Lives” against gun violence. 800 other sibling events took place on the same day across the United States and the World. Paul Chiment, the AP Statistics and AP Economy teacher at Laguna Blanca, helped escort the students to DC. Paul Chiment said that “ever since Columbine, I’ve been really affected by school shootings and whenever one happens my gut feeling is to go to that school and talk with the teachers and students and hear what they experienced and try to help out, but that’s not really practical. It would make sense for me to go to Parkland but then I heard about the march and I felt that would be a good way to get involved and make a statement about school shootings.” He also stated how inspiring it was to see “teenagers getting involved in civic engagement” and that the entire march was designed and produced by teenagers with so much energy and passion.

People traveled from all over the country to participate and make their voices heard. Mr. Chiment met a pair of teenagers who had traveled from Florida just to attend the march and be back at school on Monday. “Getting to know them over the weekend was really inspirational,” Paul said, “I was really proud to see [this event] and honored to be part of that.” With more than 200,000 people at the march, it was really difficult to keep track of everyone, but the group stayed in touch via text. Maddy Lazarovits ‘18  is a Laguna Blanca student that also went on the trip to “gain a better insight of how my generation thinks of politics” and “so I could become an educated voter and to get information to vote for the best people to lead our cities, states, and country.”

The group really enjoyed traveling more like a family, because instead of making it a “student trip” where everyone stays in a hotel and eats at restaurants, they rented a large house and everyday they went out to get groceries and cooked together at night. While everyone was in DC, they not only got to go to the march, but they also got to go see several monuments, Georgetown University, George Washington University, and, as long as each student had a partner, they got to choose museums they wanted to see.

Click here to watch Laguna Marchers in DC (interview by KTLA News)