For the first time ever I had the opportunity to go on a "field experience." Throughout my life i have gone on many a "field trip." They were always fun. We would go to the zoo or the planetarium or crappy amusement park and test crappy g-force tools. The highlight of these trips was always the bus ride and lunch. More would be learned during the bus ride over than during the whole trip itself. Usually someone would get sick and throw up on the way home. I always felt bad for the teacher who would have to put that pink kitty litter stuff on the vomit so that he could sweep it up easier. I felt even worse for the kid who would then have to ride next to barf breath who looked like he was going to ralph again at any moment.
For the most part, that is how almost every field trip would go. Even over the last two years of teaching, just about every field trip has ended with a pungent puke smelling bus pulling up to the school parking lot. Today, however, was the beginning of a new type of out of school experience.
Earlier this year, there was a push throughout our county to change the vernacular from "field trip" to field experience." "Field trip" apparently sounds too much like the thing you do with your family to Wally World during the summer. I thought this was amusing, because for the most part, students continued to take trips to all kinds of fun places. They got to go to amusement parks, the movies and even tropical islands. These are all fun experiences that all students should have the opportunity to take, however, they essentially are "trips."
This morning we loaded our students onto a bus and drove out to a large state park. Our students brought their lunches which i suspected i would be cleaning up with pink kitty litter as well as their composition notebooks. For the three hours that we toured the park, our students worked their butts off making observations and taking over 5 full pages of notes. These students had the opportunity to see what we had studied in class, but they did so in a very structured way. When utilized properly, a "field trip" can become a very meaningful opportunity. I now have seen that there truly is a difference between a "field trip" and a "field experience" and it has little to do with the amount of regurgitated lunch that i have to clean up.
