In case you missed it yesterday, you can view the event at Crystal Bridges at which we presented the results of our field trip study published in Education Next:
You can also listen to this interview that aired on the local NPR affiliates’s show, Ozarks at Large.
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Great study. Clever methodology at every turn.
Thanks!
Jay, for the majority of my teaching I have been in Title 1 low income schools in which at a maximum we had 1 field trip in the fall and 1 field trip in the spring for kids that had minimal exposure to anything outside of their local neighborhood. I started finding ways to incorporate field trips that administration could not deny because they were free and I documented and justified every benefit the students would receive from the experience. Last year district administration felt that field trips were not beneficial and would not approve any for the fall semester so I began getting family memberships to local museums and gardens and would give up weekends to take 5-6 students at a time spread out over a month so everyone got a chance to go on mini field trips. I cannot express enough how beneficial this was not only to my students learning but to my teaching as well. The students were using high level vocabulary in natural conversation with each other that I could assess simply by listening and letting them explore. Students that were normally behavior concerns in the classroom were very well behaved. Students that normally would ask to go to the restroom 5-6 times in the school day would not even mention needing to go on these trips. When we would return to the classroom they would have the experience to draw up on and it transformed our classroom immensely. I began looking for free events in the city and ended up exposing them to the Opera, Earth Day Expos, the Asian Art Museum, and several others. Students were asking me to stay at school well after the school day ended. I pursued several grants to extend this to an official program for the classroom but did not receive funding and after reading your article would love to dialogue with you more. Please let me know if you are available or are willing to discuss your research further. I think it is truly fundamental to provide exposure to students and show them how the time they spend in the classroom directly links to the working world and they have a choice about their role in society based on this exposure. Thank you for considering this request.