Throughout the weeklong stay in New Orleans, students had 

the chance to live the complexities of the city first-hand, with 
experiences ranging from mainstream (visiting the French Quarter 
and taking a tour of local swamplands) to more intense, visiting the 
Whitney Plantation to learn about the city’s history with slavery 
and volunteering with the Jericho Road housing project. They had 
the chance to visit Laguna alums at Tulane University, where they 
also met co-author Snedeker, who wrote one of the books they 
studied throughout the year.

“The challenge was to help them appreciate the culture without 

judgment and to see where our cultures might be more alike than we 
realize,” Ashley says. “Through their personal interviews, meeting 
and talking to real people, and performing research, they dedicated 
themselves to thinking through the city’s problems as if they were 
their own.”

According to Ashley, the kids seized the nuances of the city and 

used their critical thinking skills to understand how communities 
can come together to solve problems—including the man-made 
problems that we as humans often bring upon ourselves. 

“The truth is that most of our students won’t go on to become 

English majors,” Ashley says. “But we're showing them that English 
can mean more than literary analysis. It means understanding our 
world.”

Learn more: Visit http://lbsnola.weebly.com to view student 

essays, as well as a video about the trip created by Laguna student 
Camila Lemere ’18.

For the past three years, Laguna’s ninth and tenth grade students 

have gone on urban adventures as part of a schoolwide effort to 
augment the traditional curriculum with hands-on learning. Using 
both classic and modern texts as a springboard for discovery, the 
students conduct research that takes them to exciting, historically 
important locations where they meet and learn from experts and 
local residents. After inspiring trips to New York City and London, 
English Teacher Ashley Tidey, Ph.D., says that students on the 
2016 trip to New Orleans achieved a higher level of involvement 
with the communities they visited than ever before. 

“This year has really marked a shift in the class,” Ashley says. “I 

started thinking less about literary analysis and more about urban 
analysis—allowing the kids to understand the truly complex culture 
and people of the places we are studying.” 

The spring trip to New Orleans was inspired by the tenth 

anniversary of Hurricane Katrina and fifth anniversary of the BP 
oil spill. As part of the curriculum, students read The Moviegoer 
by Walker Percy and Unfathomable City: A New Orleans Atlas by 
Rebecca Solnit and Rebecca Snedeker. Both were used as the 
launching point for a year-long urban immersion into the cultural 
and social issues impacting the city of New Orleans.

While literary analysis remained a focus in the early part of 

the academic year, Ashley says students quickly moved beyond the 
literary realm, tackling tough topics like the New Orleans prison 
system, racism, and failures of the Hurricane Katrina evacuation as 
part of the year’s studies. They undertook in-depth essays on these 
self-chosen issues, and were required to perform interviews with 
someone who had first-hand experience in their topic field in order 
to gain a more personal understanding of it. According to Ashley, it 
was an empowering experience on many levels. 

For instance, student Margaux Murphy ’19 had chosen to 

study the Katrina evacuation as part of her essay. In doing so, she 
interviewed the director of an organization called Evacuteers, 
which has partnered with the city of New Orleans to prevent future 
evacuation disasters. Since Katrina, the organization has created 
16 official “evacu-posts” throughout the city, largely in low-income 
areas, to ensure faster, safer emergency response for the city’s 
underserved populations. Margaux’s connection proved so fruitful 
that Evacuteers offered to arrange for Laguna students to visit City 
Hall and learn more about the city’s new efforts toward emergency 
preparedness.

“My students literally guided me to that component of the 

experience,” Ashley says. “It’s a whole new, empowering model 
of trip planning—taking input from the students on what is 
meaningful for them to learn about.”

Laguna Stage band members join Charmaine Neville  

on stage at Snug Harbor Jazz Bistro.

LAGUNABLANCA.ORG     17

136982_LagunaBlanca_FallMagazine2016_ProofFINAL_v2.indd 17

9/20/16 9:48 AM