Lesson 11

Making the Most of Community Resources and Field Trips

If I were asked to quickly list some instructional tools for teachers, I'd rattle off questioning strategies, concept mapping, and computers—but I doubt that field trips would pop into my mind. Many educators don't take field trips seriously because we associate them with fun. They also have their drawbacks: They're costly, logistically involved, extravagant with time, and contain an element of uncertainty. No wonder kids like them so much. Most teachers still take at least one field trip each year.

                 

Justifying Field Trips

Field trips without obvious academic content can be hard to sell to administrators focused on test scores. To obtain approval, most teachers try to justify field trips by citing standards and curriculum goals. Nevertheless, the trips often get tacked onto the back end of the school year, the assumption being that they are unlikely to directly support the reading and math skills that show up on yearly standardized achievement tests.

Field trips offer, however, a crucial advantage: They can bring balance to the curriculum. The most popular destinations—museums, zoos, outdoor venues, and performances—have a natural fit with science, history, and the arts, subjects that have been marginalized by our current focus on basic skills.

Moreover, musical and theatrical performances provide opportunities that many students would not otherwise have to watch talented people demonstrate their arts. When I taught 2nd grade, we attended the free concerts that the local symphony orchestra performed during the day for schoolchildren. Most of our schools regularly take field trips to the community college, where students attend free plays. Performance field trips not only have the potential to develop aesthetic appreciation in students, but they can also develop background knowledge and oral vocabulary, which improve reading comprehension (Torgeson, 1998).

Funding Field Trips

When it comes to resource allocation, field trips are not a priority for districts. Few field trips are included in school budgets, so most funds often come from parents (Anderson, Kisiel, & Storksdieck, 2006). The biggest contributors, besides individual families, are site-based parent organizations that often pay for the entire field trip, transportation, or scholarships for students whose families cannot afford the fees.

Many local grant programs fund field trips, so an Internet search and a simple grant proposal can be worthwhile. For example, one of our local quarries paid to bus a group of earth science students out for a site visit because the management saw it as a way to create goodwill in the community. A few organizations, such as Target, have grant programs specifically designed to fund field trips (Target, n.d.).

Educational field trips may be developed by each school to provide a variety of experiences and enhance the student's educational opportunities. Although field trips are adjunct to the instructional program, each is a learning activity and bears a direct relationship to the normal school experience.

For optimum student benefit, each field trip must be well planned beforehand and thoroughly evaluated after completion. The teacher or sponsor in charge of the group is responsible for the activity just as if it were conducted at school. All students within the class or school group must be given the opportunity to participate in the field trip.

This procedure has been developed to assist schools in planning and conducting educational field trips and travel to school-oriented activities off campus. The overall objective is to facilitate optimum learning experiences through educational field trips and school-sponsored student travel to approved activities.

FIELD TRIPS AND OTHER STUDENT TRAVEL

The Board recognizes that field trips, when used for teaching and learning integral to the curriculum, are an educationally sound and important ingredient in the instructional program of the schools. Properly planned and executed field trips should:

                  

A.

supplement and enrich classroom procedures by providing learning experiences in an environment outside the schools

B.

arouse new interests among students;

C.

help students relate school experiences to the reality of the world outside of school;

D.

bring the resources of the community - natural, artistic, industrial, commercial, governmental, educational - within the student's learning experience;

E.

afford students the opportunity to study and explore real situations and processes in their actual environment.

For purposes of this procedure, a field trip shall be defined as any planned journey for one or more students away from District premises, which is under the supervision of an instructional staff member and an integral part of a course of study.

Other student travel shall be defined as any planned, student-travel activity that is approved as part of the District's total educational program.

The Superintendent shall prepare administrative procedures for the operation of both field and other District-sponsored trips, including athletic trips, which shall ensure:

A.

the safety and well-being of students;

B.

parental permission is sought and obtained before any student leaves the District on a trip;

C.

each trip is properly planned, and if a field trip, is integrated with the curriculum, evaluated, and followed up by appropriate activities which enhance its usefulness;

D.

the effectiveness of field trip activities is judged in terms of demonstrated learning outcomes;

E.

each trip is properly monitored and supervised;

F.

student behavior while on all field trips complies with the Student Code of Conduct and on all other rules, policies, and procedures set forth by schools;

G.

a copy of each student's Emergency Medical Authorization Form is in the possession of the staff member in charge.