By Kristin
I just made copies of the necessary permission slips for an upcoming trip to see Henry V. I felt a little guilty, because the permission slips have been flying fast and furiously lately. Students leave school for various competitions, marine biology boat trips, giving talks at the middle schools or simply spending a few periods in the auditorium watching the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz play some music.
Given the push to meet academic standards, to the detriment of a lot of other things like P.E., art, music, and voc. ed. classes, are field trips a good thing or bad? Do they help make up for the fact opportunities have been cut, or do they create problems by taking kids out of the classroom? I wonder if the increased field trips in my building are an indication that the staff feels these non-academic experiences are an important part of a child's education. Cut the music program and we'll bring in a jazz performance, we seem to be saying. Or, maybe it's a backlash to the pressure to meet standards in only a few college-prep subjects at the expense of other learning opportunities.
I still remember a trip my class took to the Old Mission at San Luis Obispo to see the swallows when I was in fifth grade. We took the train up from San Diego, me carrying only my father's leather binocular case, emptied of the binoculars and filled with some money, a Dr. Pepper flavored lip gloss, and my little Kodak 110 camera. It was like a purse, and I felt grown up and adventurous. At the Mission we were able to buy a little bag of bird seed to feed the swallows. We had lunch in the courtyard near the fountain, then took the train back home. The whole day was delicious and exciting. I think that was the day I learned to travel independently even though I was part of a big group herded by my teacher. The Old Mission's peaceful and beautiful space established my sense of aesthetic. It was a life changing experience - one caused by a teacher, but not in a classroom.
Not all of my students are able to take advantage of the rich cultural experiences Seattle offers, like seeing live theater. The Seattle Center isn't a train ride away, just a bus ride, and while Seattle Shakespeare Company isn't old and beautiful like the San Luis Obispo Mission, maybe seeing Shakespeare brought to life will change a life or two, alter a perspective. I hope it's worth the school the kids will miss.
But I know not everyone supports field trips. What's it like in your building? Are there limits? Do people take sides for or against out-of-classroom experiences? Should we continue to allow field trips when the government's expectation is that students learn reading, writing, science and arithmetic in school, when we've been told that nothing else really matters?
Absolutely, they’re important! The reason I know is they’re memorable, and as you said in your post, life changing. I don’t know how it can be that traveling with your parents to downtown Seattle can be rather blase, but going with your class changes everything. Suddenly you’re curious about the walrus heads on the Arctic Building, or the sculpture on the corner, or the boat buried beneath the foundation. Class field trips have a culture of discovery and adventure that you just can’t get in the classroom. I believe we owe it to our students to expose them to the real world and entice them to wonder and discover. They need these experiences to continue caring about the content their tested on. So what if they’re out of the classroom for a day. If they had stayed, do you think they’d remember their learning from that day better than a field trip?
At the elementary level, I can still take my kids on field trips and be mostly guilt-free, as it won’t affect the other teachers. Even still, administrators have made it harder for us to do so. We now have to get our field trips approved far in advanced by the district office. We need to list learning objectives, EALRs, and explain how it ties in with our curriculum. We also have to have all our chaperones identified long beforehand. The paperwork has become a huge headache. Field trip #6 is coming at the end of this month. And, I may try to squeeze in one more.
I can no longer teach my unit on the Klondike gold rush. My science rain-forest unit has been replaced by an “Inquiry Kit”. I’ve no time to fit in my social studies and science unit on the cultural and economic importance of salmon. My passions, once a fruitful source of creative and engaging lessons, have less of a role to play in my classroom than they once did. Since I’m less able to bring my passions to my classroom then I’ll bring my class to places where they may find their passion.
We’re going on our fourth field trip next week, and we have another one scheduled for later this spring. I think field trips are essential when they are carefully tied to content learned in the classroom.
There aren’t many field trips in my building, it seems–partly because of the intense sensibility that classroom time is sacred and how dare you take all those kids out of my class as if yours is so much more important than mine! It seems to ebb and flow, really, for a year or two, kids are constantly pulled out for increasingly less defensible experiences (going to the town during class time to count the number of cars that turn left at an intersection by comparison to those who turn right in order to create a statistical graph? I don’t think so). The staff rises in anger against such perceived wastes, the admin clamps down on field trips, and we go through a dry season like the one I feel we’re in now.
I tend to think that letting kids go to DECA international competition is more important than my lesson about effective essay conclusions which I can easily make up with the kid after school. And that trip to meet and greet the engineers at Sharp? I’d rather my students go to that than hang around in my room and listen to their peers butcher Mercutio’s Queen Mab speech aloud in class. It’s tough for me do judge the merit of others’ trips–but judge I do. I’d love to take a classful of kiddos to see a pro recite Queen Mab in person, and I do think it would change the way they viewed literature.
Why don’t I then? Good question.