- To demonstrate to children that learning doesn't just happen in school, but learning is part of the greater culture and society too.
- To take advantage of the many great learning venues all around us, venues that include stadiums, museums, hands-on models, planetariums, conservation areas, and more.
- To learn with students from experts in the field
- To make learning engaging, meaningful, fun, and active
- To create common experiences for the learning team, and then to use those experiences throughout the year as common reference points for future learning
We live in an area that's rich with learning resources, and it's great to take advantage of that.
To plan and carry out these field trips takes a lot of time and money. Time and money can be stumbling blocks for the following reasons:
- family's ability to pay (We do have some support for this, and it takes time to relay and follow up on this support for families that need it)
- administrative time to process all the payments (We typically write the emails, create/copy the permission slips, relay the information to families/others, and follow-up on payments before or after school since we have little administrative time during the school day.)
- phone time to plan the trips (we typically plan these trips during the summer months because it takes so much phone time to make the arrangements--we're often waiting for up to an hour on the phone or playing phone tag for days. This is time we don't have during the school day)
Some educators will not organize field studies because of the many stumbling blocks and liabilities inherent in these events, yet we persist with these events because of how rich the experiences are in relation to our overall learning goals. I know the lifelong impact a good field trip can have on a child, and I also understand the sense of team positive field studies create for children. We ask students to reflect on their field studies as one way to assess these events, and students' assessments have demonstrated how positive these events are. We believe that these events help children to understand the breadth, depth, meaning, and joy that learning can be in their lives now and into the future.
As I think about the development of field studies, I am wondering about these questions:
- How can we streamline the administrative tasks associated with field studies? (We've recently begun collecting payments and permissions online, but there's room for growth)
- How can we make field trips more affordable to students and schools? Should field trips be part of the school budget so families are not burdened with these costs?
- Do we promote too many field trips? I think not, but when our field trips meet with struggle, I wonder if this might be true?
As we continue to grow our hands-on, experiential learning program, analyzing the roles of field studies is an important consideration, one I'll be exploring on my own and with others in the days ahead.
