HW! Go’s Digital Storytelling Adventure trip to Cambodia has not been officially approved by the school, but registration is open on the Friendship Tours World Travel website.

Ninth to 12th grade students who want to go on the trip July 17-28 must fill out an application explaining why they want to go on the trip and provide a note from their dean. Cheri Gaulke, Head of Visual Arts Department and lead chaperone, will make the final decision about the 20 students that go on the trip.

“Basically we want to be sure that we have students who are really going for the right reasons,” Gaulke said. “I think when you see a trip to a place as exciting as Cambodia or Cuba or those kinds of destinations it just looks intriguing, and we just always want to communicate that it’s not a vacation. It is a cultural trip, and you learn about culture, but there’s also this whole other aspect that we’re learning about, which makes it much deeper and richer.”

Gaulke, cinematographer Jeff MacIntyre and the director of Friendship Tours World Travel Alethea Tyner Paradis will lead the trip.

Following the Digital Storytelling Adventure trip to Cuba, school policies were changed so that students from other schools can no longer participate in school trips during the school year, outside vendors cannot serve as chaperones and two Harvard-Westlake teachers must be on all trips. Another chaperone has not been announced.

“Harvard-Westlake recommends a male chaperone and a female chaperone attend any overnight trips when both boys and girls are participating,” Patterson said.

Students will be required to create a digital storytelling project after they return. They will interview Killing Fields survivor Arn Chorn Pond on campus April 13 and travel to Phnom Penh, Battambang and Siem Reap in Cambodia.

They will visit museums, the Killing Fields and the Tuoi Sieng Prison. There is an information meeting March 23 in Feldman-Horn 107.