Up Close and Personal

During a school trip to Washington, a nonprofit program offers teachers their own intimate glimpse of how government works.

(Scott Robinson)

THE DAY JOSHUA FUCHS LANDS IN TOWN, the young high school teacher wanders alone along the Mall and among the museums and monuments, gazing in awe and wonderment at the iconic symbols of the nation's capital.

On this, his first trip to Washington, he is an innocent at home.

"You see it in pictures. Suddenly, it's all in front of you, all the symbolism," he marvels at the end of the day. "I was sitting by the water in front of Capitol Hill, taking it all in. I sat first looking up at the Capitol for 10 or 15 minutes, just looking at it, thinking about the influence this small little area has over so much of the country and the world."

Fuchs, 29, tall and lanky, looking almost Lincolnesque with a wisp of a beard, is one of five teachers and 84 students who have come here from California's inner-city Oakland Technical High School.

The Oakland contingent is led by Maryann Wolfe, 60, the head of the social science department, who has been bringing groups here since 1983. The others are Marietta Joe, 48, an English lit teacher; Parker Merrill, 59, an engineering instructor; and Harry Pasternak, 60, who teaches government and economics.

The students are juniors and seniors in AP or honors classes. But this is not your typical spring class trip to Washington. This is the nation's capital "Close Up," a program that annually brings 20,000 students and 2,000 teachers here from 11,000 schools to get an inside look at how their government works.

The program is run by an entity far better known outside the Washington area. Yet, housed on the sixth floor of a waterfront building in Old Town Alexandria, the nonprofit Close Up Foundation has been putting together what for some is a life-changing week since 1971. It's a large operation, with 69 full-time and 50 seasonal employees, and a robust publishing arm that produces videos, teacher manuals and student guides. Close Up has an annual budget of $29 million, including $2.5 million in federal funds. Most of the rest comes in the form of tuition payments from students, schools and their sponsors. This week, 713 students and 93 teachers from 14 schools are here, housed at five motels. All are following in the footsteps of such illustrious Close Up alums as Oklahoma Gov. Brad Henry, Secretary of Education Margaret Spellman, and countless mayors and legislators. The brainchild of former State Department official Stephen A. Janger, who ran the foundation until his 2005 retirement, Close Up takes no positions on issues of the day. The goal is to educate, not advocate.

"It's beyond being nonpartisan," with a focus on getting participants to think critically about issues and become civically engaged, says the program's president and CEO, Timothy S. Davis, 53, a White House staffer during the Carter administration who attended Close Up as a high school student during its first year. While the students follow one schedule, the teachers follow another, their paths only occasionally crossing.

"This is a primary source for professional development for teachers," says Davis, sitting in his picture-window office overlooking the Potomac with the Capitol dome in the distance. "Just to register young people to vote without the opportunity to reflect is not enough. The schools have a real responsibility to step in, and we want to complement and support that."

For teachers, it's a chance to network and, many say, to return to their classrooms reenergized, often bringing new ideas and using the foundation's annually updated Current Issues book. Maryann Nielsen, an AP government teacher at a Pasadena, Calif., high school, says she has used the program to develop lessons on the Bill of Rights. Susan Howard, a Brighton, Mich., high school teacher, has developed an entire class around the Close Up program, an idea she got while talking to a teacher she met on one of her trips to Washington. Among other things, her students commit to visiting Washington as Close Up participants and organize a voter-registration drive at the school each spring. "It's become an institution," Howard says.

Teachers on Close Up trips can earn in-service or graduate credits after completing and submitting course assignments. Fuchs, who teaches physical education in Oakland and plans to go into school administration, hopes to use the week to gain credits to advance his career. Still, for him such considerations are secondary.

"More adults need to experience this and be a part of it," he says. But, he muses, not all schools can afford to send students and teachers. "It reemphasizes the fact that there is such a wide gap in our school systems." It cost about $1,700 for each of the Oakland participants to attend the program, with much of the money coming from fundraisers and donations.