THE SOUTHWEST TRIP: PART ONE
“They’re looking out those little black doors. I can just feel their eyes on my back, “ said a sixth grader.
“They’re looking out those little black doors. I can just feel their eyes on my back, “ said one sixth grader as he looked over his shoulder to the village of Keet Seel sheltered on its high shelf in the largest cave of the Southwest. They were the ghosts of the Anasazis who lived in Kent Seel.”
So, begins Nancy Nye Priest’s reminiscences of the many trips her sixth-grade students and she took to the Southwest during the spring. When I first came to Graland, so many colleagues spoke in superlatives about two Graland trips: the sixth grade trip to Estes Park with Jack McKenna and the Southwest trip.
Mrs. Priest continues. . .
“The sixth grader and his classmates had just climbed down from the Anasazi ruins and were on the way back to the Navaho horses which would carry them back to the Navaho canyon to a Navaho feast that evening. It was all part of the annual sixth-grade trips to the Southwest which began as a culmination of a year’s pre-anthropology study. The students had arrived the Sunday before at. . . (the Priests’) property in McElmo Canyon and had branched out to a study day in Mesa Verde, followed the next day by an investigation of some unexcavated ruins never visited by the ordinary Southwest visitor. These ruins lie in the wild country behind the Priest property. (The students) went to see the excavations of Mr. and Mrs. George Kelly and to study the plants used by the Anasazis in the area.”
Graland Country Day School
Graland Country Day School is a private school in Denver, Colorado, serving students in preschool, kindergarten, elementary, and middle school. Founded in Denver in 1927, Graland incorporates a rich, experiential learning approach in a traditional classroom setting, emphasizing the development of globally and socially conscious leaders who excel academically.
