U.S. government teacher Chalene Young took 100 Hellgate seniors to Helena on April 17 to see the Capitol. The students toured the capitol building, watched the House in session and met Governor Greg Gianforte. 

     This trip has not happened the past couple years due to the pandemic. “We have a long history of doing this. We’ve been doing this for I think over 20 years now. We do follow a pattern of trying to look at least aspects of all three branches of government, the judicial branch, the executive branch, and the legislative branch,” said Young.

     Two Beachliner buses departed from Hellgate at 7:30 am and arrived back at around 4:30. “Right now, I think we did what we could given the restrictions of one day,” said Young.

     “I think that a lot of the time people aren’t able to go and see those legislative buildings and I thought it was a good learning experience,” said Amelia Kiffe.

    “My favorite part of the trip was definitely sitting in on the session of the Montana House of Representatives. Not only did we get to see Zooey Zephyr give her infamous speech but we also got to see how everybody interacted, which was very interesting,” said Chloe Caldwell.

“Learning about state government is important and I would say that it’s often overlooked. Curriculum wise we do tend to focus more on the national government and yet if you think about it, you are a lot closer to your state government and so it kinda makes sense that you should know a little bit more about something that’s close to you,” said Young.

     Young plans to continue the tradition of taking students to the capitol going forward. “I hope that it reinforces how important learning about how our government works, whether it’s at the national or state level, I hope that students learned something from that and how it can affect our lives.”