Most people go through their whole lives without learning in depth what exactly the government does and the importance of it. This is because other than the presidential election, a majority of students don’t pay politics much attention.

At the Tomorrow’s Leaders conference roughly 30 high school students were lead on a field trip by government teacher Ryan Foltz. The students that participated in this event had an opportunity to listen to congressman Bob Gibbs, and have lunch with the members of the Plain Township rotary. This field trip allowed them to learn more about the decision making from the government by actually talking to a representative.

“I learned a lot about our current public policy and how Washington is dealing with current problems, such as the shootings, drugs, etc,” senior Nathan Wellman said.

After listening to Bob Gibbs’ speech each student had the opportunity to ask him any question that they had.

“Overall the field trip was a great experience,” senior Payton Fox said.“ It’s not everyday you get to personally speak with a US

While speaking with the congressman most of the questions and conversations steered towards the recent events dealing with school safety.

“We asked questions based on the current political controversies in today’s society,” senior Steven Shalenberger said. “We ended mostly talking about guns, and how to protect US schools.”

After their conversation with Gibbs the students ate lunch with the Plain Local rotary.

“We were able to learn about what the members of the rotary do, and how they help our community,” Fox said.

The rotary talked about their job and how they solve issues and come up with solutions.

“It was an eye opening experience, because other than taking AP Government, I knew the basics, but not really how they worked with specific problems,” Wellman said.

The final thing that the students did was they participated in a group activity. The students from both GlenOak and Central split up into eight groups. They were then tasked with the challenge to create an organization that would help the community out and create local jobs.

“My favorite part was being able to work with members from a different school to come up with a unique club,” Fox said. “ We were able to meet new people and had to find an interest that would satisfy multiple people.”

The teams came up with a wide variety of ways that could potentially help there home, stark county.

“Overall, I liked it a lot,” Wellman said. “ As it pieced together everything I had previously learned, and then added on to that, as well as hearing first hand what is going on in our nation’s capital today.”

In the end, all the students that came had an unique experience to talk to a US congressman, and learn in depth how government officials make decisions to solve different problems. Ranging from small ones, like here in Stark County, or massive ones, including gun control and preventing the use of drugs.