Students from The Learning Center at Jefferson Intermediate School had a special cultural excursion to celebrate the end of the school year.

Teacher Betty Bollard wrote a grant to take students on a trip on May 24th that included stops at Monarch’s Restaurant, the Royal Amsterdam Hotel, and the Pella Opera House. Bollard tells KNIA/KRLS News the experience was the first time many of the students learned about fine dining, ate a meal at Monarch’s, received an etiquette lesson, and heard organ music at the Pella Opera House.

“Sometimes it’s good to go outside of what our norm is or our comfort zone and experience something different, and that maybe the students would take some little morsel of that away with them into adult life and appreciate it or pay it forward and do something kind for someone else some day,” she says.

Thirty students participated in the first-of-its-kind learning experience in the district.