Your Sun: Bringing textbook learning to life: Students take civil rights program to Alabama

Four South County students tour Alabama historical sites over spring break

By Chloe Nelson, Staff Writer | April 8, 2026

A total of 20 area students spent spring break immersing themselves in the place where much of the Civil Rights Movement unfolded: Alabama.

Rather than sitting in a classroom, they brought textbook learning to life by walking in the footsteps of bridge marchers, hearing from Pulitzer Prize-winning authors and talking to human equity leaders about their mission.

The trip capped a six-month learning stint that high schoolers had Bending the Arc program.

The civil rights course combined historical study, dialogue with leading scholars and educators and on-the-ground learning in the places where history happened, according to a news release.

In March, traveling through Montgomery, Tuskegee, Selma and Birmingham, students visited 21 historic sites, including the Edmund Pettus Bridge and the Equal Justice Initiative national lynching memorial.

Many have finished the program feeling emotionally and academically transformed, while others have become inspired to lead the community in issues here at home.

Participants emotionally struck by trip

For many students, the experience was emotionally and academically transformative.

Ambar Galva-Perez, a Booker High School sophomore, called the experience "life-changing."

“It was beautiful. I cried a lot," Galva-Perez stated in a news release. "And there were a lot of times where we were speaking about victims of segregation, of racism, of slavery. And it was such a beautiful thing because they really did an amazing job of personalizing the victims.”

Mackenzie Lynn, one of the three Venice High School students who found the opportunity during a class meeting one day, felt the same way.

At Freedom Monument Sculpture Park in Montgomery, she felt the most impact. The artwork of a female slave pushing out her chest in defiance brought Lynn to tears, she said.

"I had to take a minute before I walked through it, because the emotion that held on the on the face of the woman, it was just a lot," she said. "I feel like it was kind of like walking through her heart, her soul."

More historical context shocks students

In other tour stops, Lynn felt they gave more insight into historical events than her textbooks did — like seeing in person the top floor of a Montgomery house where Martin Luther King Jr. held meetings to talk about marches.

"I was like, 'Wow, no wonder they're getting all these good ideas, they're meeting at people's homes," she said. "What they're doing isn't just coming out of thin air."

An art and history fan, Lynn was happy to see her lessons come to life in a way that couldn't be replicated in the classroom.

"It just opened so many doors in my brain, and like I honestly had a knowledge overload just on the first day," the junior said. "But I'm so glad I took a second time learning."

Shanthi Marmash, a Pine View junior, found the program's hands-on lessons engaging, especially the tour of the historic downtown Sarasota Leonard Reid House, which was saved from demolition and moved to Newtown in 2022.

Like her education of Sarasota, Marmash found her lessons in Alabama a great way to connect history with the space it happened in.

Selma and Birmingham impacted her the most, specifically Selma's Edmund Pettus Bridge — where hundreds of marchers walked between towns in protest of voting rights, despite physical violence from nearby police.

Marmash said she will remember the moment for a very long time.

"Going on the trip made it real, in a sense that it wasn't real before, but that it's more like a personal connection now," she said. "That's something that I don't think I would have gotten had I just read about it."

Leaders praise, award student engagement

Edna Sherrell, BDI director of learning, said the students led with maturity, empathy and curiosity while engaging in the trip's lessons.

"What stood out most was how they connected the past to their own lives and to the responsiility they now feel as young leaders," Sherrell said. "That is the true measure of transformative learning.”

John Annis, interim CEO of Charles & Margery Barancik Foundation — which sponsors the program — said experiential learning is important in education.

"These students are not only learning history, they are building the compassion, critical thinking and leadership skills that our communities need for the future,” Annis said in the news release.

Every student will receive a $500 scholarship and an award certificate at an upcoming ceremony, recognizing their participation in the intensive civic learning experience, according to the news release.

Applications for the next program of Bending the Arc will open in August 2026.

Students look to solve modern issues

Besides a historical lesson, the students also drew modern connections.

As the group visited the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, a memorial to commemorate the Black victims of lynching, Marmash said she was taken with the fact that, at one time, lynchings were legally backed.

She equates the era to a controversial topic today — people who are being detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforement without being given due process.

"It was scary, kind of," Marmash said. "I think, in many ways, it applies to today."

Marmash said it shows how essential it is to stay informed about the issues of today.

"With the amount of information that's out there, I feel like it's easy to get overwhelmed with how vast some of these issues seem," she said. "But I think it's important that we do our part to understand these and see what we can do to maybe change them."

Lynn said she learned not only to continue learning but share what she knows.

"I think having this background knowledge also kind of incorporates with how you act with others and ... how things can change,"she said.

Lynn hopes she can use her new knowledge for inequalities in ongoing discrimination issues. One issue Marmash would like to see students and people more involved in are local elections, not just federal ones.

"The No Kings protests ... I think that that's important but it would also be interesting to get engaged with how these things affect people, like right here where we live," Marmash said.

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