One of my favorite places on Earth to visit is Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello.  The sheer beauty of the property is enough to make your heart skip a beat.  Imagine how thrilled I was to be able to plan a class trip to Monticello for 88 of my eighth grade students and 12 faculty members.  Each year my colleagues and I take our eighth graders to Colonial Williamsburg to do research for a paper that they write during the first semester.  It is important to us that they have the experience of interviewing experts as well as using primary sources from the living museum to prove their theses.  Monticello was a new addition to our trip to serve the same purpose.

The reason I chose Monticello as part of my students’ experience is because I feel that they do a great job acknowledging the history of the enslaved population at the plantation.  Monticello recognizes the central role that African Americans played in “laboring for Jefferson’s happiness”, and are not afraid to hide the roots of slavery on the property.  They are also quite open in exposing Jefferson’s often hypocritical views on the subject.  My students with thesis statements about the African American experience in the colonial era had a lot to gain by visiting Monticello both by viewing the exhibits as well as talking to their expert docents.

The docents were particularly helpful in answering student and teacher questions about the various topics they were researching.  The tour our students took was 2.5 hours long, but felt quite short (in their words!) because they were busy the entire time.  The touring office took special care prepare their docents for students that were visiting to do research for papers, and for that the students and I were extremely grateful.  Docents stayed behind for a short while to answer questions after tours were over, and our students were invited to stay on the mountaintop until closing at 6:00pm.

Overall, I would recommend Monticello for a class trip for your students.  If you can do the more focused 4-hour tours rather than simply the 2.5 hour “Roundabout”, I would recommend that simply because you are able to go more in depth about a particular topic rather than go on a tour of the house which can turn into just learning facts about Jefferson if you’re not careful to let the tour office know the purpose of your trip.  We do the “Roundabout” tour because we are driving from New Jersey and cannot arrive in time to take a 4-hour tour.