A Field Trip to the Fed
Advancement Placement Comparative Government’s trip into the city
By Arielle Sears and Jana Kabadaya, Sports Section Editor and Staff Writer
Courtesy Photos from Joseph Schottland
On Sept. 14, seniors from the three Economics and Advanced Placement Comparative Government (AP Comp Gov) classes boarded a Bay Area Rapid Transit train into the city to explore the functions of the Federal Reserve and learn what the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (Ninth Circuit) does.
After COVID, the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco stopped offering tours to the public. AP Comp Gov and Economics teacher Joseph Schottland was able to make the field trip a reality through connections and lots of planning.
“It took a while, several weeks, to set this whole thing up and I have to give credit to Mrs. Field, who has a personal connection to the Federal Reserve,” Schottland said. “She put me in touch with the Executive Vice President of Operations and Safety at the [San Francisco] Federal Reserve, and he put me in touch with one of his assistants who is part of his district cash team, Jordan Villa, and I worked out bringing students.”
While this trip took effort to arrange, Schottland believed learning from the Federal Reserve and Ninth Circuit would be a valuable experience for his students.
“There were a couple of goals, one was to give students a real world example of how an important institution in our economic system and an important institution in our legal system work and actually allow them to see what those institutions look like,” Schottland said.
In addition to learning about Federal Reserve operations, students participated in a workshop to learn about counterfeit money and identifiers on the various bills to help ensure they are real.
“The Federal Reserve taught us how to understand what money was real and what was fake. They gave us so many cool tips,” AP Comp Gov student Zoe Scheunemann said. “Being in the workshop and holding real money in my hands and learning what was real and what wasn’t was incredible for me.”
After taking turns inspecting money and touring the basement, the AP Comp Gov students switched gears to the Ninth Circuit Court House, a 30-minute walk away.
“We had a docent led-tour of Ninth Circuit building, focusing on the architecture and its storied history, including surviving the 1909 San Francisco earthquake and corresponding fire,” AP Comp Gov student Henry Rosenberg said. “Directly afterward, we were seated in the infamous courtroom one, where we had a forum with 3 active judges and learned about the cases they oversee across 9 western states, and asked questions about law and their careers.”
Some students found the Question and Answer portion most enlightening, as they were able to learn about topics they were most interested in, while also hearing from credible people in the field.
“My favorite part of the field trip was definitely our meeting with the 9th circuit judges,” AP Comp Gov student Leia Pham said. “It is such a rare opportunity for high school students to be able to learn about the law from experts like them and to be able to ask them about their own thought processes. We got a deep insight as to how experts in legal precedent actually approach their cases, and it was incredible to hear them break down how our judicial system functions.”
This trip connected the in-class learning about the Federal Reserve to the human perspectives of how the agency works.
“We had already learned about the Federal Reserve and its involvement in setting monetary policy for Americans,” AP Comp Gov student Josh Lee said. “At the Federal Reserve, we furthered our learning by hearing about how the Federal Reserve handles currency for Americans and other countries, which benefits our learning of comparative government because we learned about the interconnections with currency between many different countries.”
Previously, Acalanes used to participate in a similar field trip to the Federal Reserve annually, and this trip served as a trial run for potential experiences future classes may participate in.
“Before COVID, the Federal Reserve used to run public tours of the Federal Reserve Bank, but in COVID, they stopped it, and they never restarted it,” Schottland said. “And Mr. Villa actually was involved in some of those tours. So he was familiar with organizing something like that. And I think in the back of his mind, I can't really speak for him, but from what he told me, they were toying with the idea of perhaps bringing these tours back, and we saw this as an opportunity to sort of beta test it.”
