No one knows a city like a local - and no one is better positioned to teach tourists about the real DC than those who live here, work here, and go to school here. Challenge your students to design a tour of your school's neighborhood that would introduce their DC, the real DC, to those coming from out of town. Start by myth-busting what many have heard and think they know about the nation's capital.
DC was built on a swamp.
NOPE (marshy land, but not a swamp!)
No building in DC can be taller than the Washington Monument or the Capitol because they are the most important buildings in the nation's capital.
NOPE (the Monument is the tallest structure at 555 feet, but it's a formula in the 1910 Height Act that is responsible for DC's low-lying skyline, not reverence of national monuments)
DC Statehood would be unconstitutional! States need to be admitted to the Union in pairs! DC should be retroceded to Maryland!
NOPE. NOPE NOPE NOPE NOPE NOPE. (Watch Becoming Douglass Commonwealth: From DC Disenfranchisement to Full Democracy to learn about rebuttals to the arguments against statehood, and eight areas of everyday life where lack of statehood negatively impacts Washingtonians today).