Travis Pyle

Field trips should be a part of every child's life.  Imagine if you will a hot classroom, children practically melting on the floor, the children complaining of needing some time to get away from their hot school so they can get a little time to relax.  If children or even teens were not given any time to get away from their tedious life at school by having a field trip at least for a day, this is what their future would possibly be like.

     If I was the children and I felt hot like that, I would not sit still.  Teachers today can and sometimes are very impatient.  I have whiteness this in many of my teacher over the years.  In fact a few years ago, when I was in fourth grade we had to do fund raisers for our class so that we could go to a field trip to the Philadelphia Mint.  The catch was it was only our class going, because at the time my school had cut out the funding for all field trips.

Field trips can also be fun and educational.  When my fourth grade class went to the Philadelphia Mint, we were given a packet that we had to complete as we went throughout the historical museum.  Although kids just want to have fun when they are at a place that can be listed as unrelated to school, if you give the kids a packet of things to find and fin educational quizzes and other educational but fun things then you have a guaranteed successful field trip.  It is one hundred percent bullet-proof.

Even when I was in sixth grade and the school brought back the field trips we had a fun educational field trip.  That year we went bowling and as most people would think, how can you make bowling fun and educational at the same time?  It’s quite simple really, first you get them bowling and you make the game a contest.  That makes things fun right?  Then you give them a paper that shows the ten pins acting as if they were worth different amounts of points.  You have those children try and hit the pins.  Add up the points they got.  So for a example the pins are worth the amount they are numbered.  Pin one is worth one point. Pin two is worth two points and so on.  The child hits down all ten points.  A strike right, wrong, the amount of strikes or spares you get does not count in this game.  Once the game is finished the children add up the amount of points they get.  The person that has the most amounts of points at the end of the day wins and they can get a prize something.

It’s not like I ever won a game of bowling in my life, but every time I went we did the same thing.  What is that? You’re asking what this trip teaches; this trip was taken for only the students who were in like third grade.  So this was a grade way to learn how to learn to add or subtract.  Do not ask me why we took a trip like this when I was in sixth grade.  I mean I was and still am a very smart person.  When we took that trip, I found it to be a little insulting.  Would not you?

When I was in eighth grade we went to Wild Wood New Jersey.  Now I know that there is no way to make a field trip to the beach or amusement park educational, and I know some people would say that if it is not educational then why would you take a class there?  This is what they would retort.  Going to Wild Wood New Jersey is not educational by any means, but the eighth grade class was graduating. We were going to high school next year and we wanted to give them a memory they would never forget.

So you see that there is a difference in no educational and educational field trips.  You also have learned that you can take a normal fun day without learning and make it into something educational.  If fact I just had this talk with someone in my family yesterday.  My parents seem to think that students should not have to have fun on a field trip.  Mt sister says that field trips are only beneficial if the students are having fun.  She says that if an instructor was blabbing on over and over without stopping to make it fun in a way, the students are not going to take anything in.

I chose the side with my sister, I too believe that if the instructor is not capturing my full and undivided attention then I will not have a care for what I am learning, thus causing me to not pay attention to anything my teacher may have said.  So, if there was a test or quiz on what ever we were learning I would have failed.  I would not blame it on me either.  I would blame it on my school or the place we went for the field trip, because young students are young they have a very short attention spans and anything can throw them off.

Now you know my position on the vexing debate on whether or not field trips should continue and how they can be made fun and educational.