While field trips aren't normally a required part of your curriculum, they can be extremely effective if planned and used correctly. This article discusses the pros and cons of field trips and gives a step by step list of how to create an effective and hopefully enjoyable field trip for you and your students.
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In Dallas ISD Elementary schools Field trips are basically prohibited. You can charge a student no more than 5 dollars to go on a field trip and it costs aprox $4 a student to pay for a school bus to take the students anywhere. That leaves $1 for ANY activities, including eating. Yes, going on a school bus is required by law.
Less than 20 years ago when I was in elementary school in this district I got to go downtown to see plays, eat in a real restaurant. (This was many of my fellow classmates only exposure to life outside our poor neighborhood and a chance to learn how to behave in public and manners.) We also got to go to the zoo, the local history museums, and to the newspaper home office to see how it operated.
All these great experiences have been taken away from students today, and it is sad.
Field trips are great. We read the book but to really graps what is being taught and to experience it makes field trips wonderful! My daughter’s appreciation for the arts expanded to just more that paint on paper. Thanks to our Art Museums here. My son’s mind went wild for the liking of science which he found was boring until he saw a replica of the first US spaceship at the Science Museum. Field Trips are great and I agree with C.E.M. This may be the only outing an uderprivilage or any child may get. I came from a middle class neighborhood when I was young but my family wasn’t in to such things. School introduced me to different places. Now, I homeschool my children and we are somewhere almost at least once a week discovering different museums, historical places etc. It’s fun!
The idea of the “e-trip” is fascinating. Much like the commercial with Ellen Paige and the kids say “we’re going to China today!” with an outstanding “ni hao” as the children come up on the computer screen
There is absolutely no substitute to going to a museum, nature preserve, planetarium, government building etc..
But there is something truly remarkable for children to be able
to electronically meet children of the same age in a different state, and in this situation, a different country. It’d be nice to see some of this happen in more technologically affluent schools to deter a sort of xenophobic culture that may occur in some remote school districts.
Why not let the parents choose themselves for schooltrips. They can tick the boxes in a form where also the money they will be charged for is mentioned. So, then it’s their choice what they do for their children.
Your system is – sad enough – also introduced in my country. You can’t charge parents at all nowadays. So, we ask them to subscribe for their kids for trips etc.
But is really sad that it is not payed from public budgets. Because exactly the less privileged people well not tick the box for a schooltrip out of private payment problems