A Jersey Teacher's Dilemma: To Field Trip or Not to Field Trip?

Teachers and administrators frequently debate over the value of field trips. This is a recurrent discussion that echoes in faculty meetings everywhere. What is the value of taking a large group of students – or all of them – out of school for an entire day or more to an off campus setting? What will they really get out of it, aside from getting a day or two off from formal instruction? Is learning in those circumstances really possible, at least from an academic point of view, with students who would rather take the time to concentrate on their own drama than whatever surrounds them?

My thoughts on the value of field trips have varied over the years. At first I welcomed them, but as I became more involved in my entire school community I witnessed the disruption they cause for other teachers, coaches and parents. Field trips bring on not just educational challenges but logistical ones as well. How many kids will fit on the bus? Do we have an up-to-the-minute list of everyone who’s going and everyone who’s not? What are we doing for food? What about those three kids with special dietary needs? Doesn’t Raymond have one of those dangerous peanut allergies – or is it Pedro? Did we get the nurse’s note on that?

So after a decade and a half of teaching experience, I have settled on this overarching philosophy for field trips. For a field trip to be useful, the experience and its potential value must completely outweigh any disruption it might cause. And it must do something that cannot, in any way or using any technology, be replicated in a classroom setting. The environment of the field trip must be part of the message itself; it must provide students with an all-encompassing set of new sights, smells, sounds and surfaces. It’s got to shake them up and out of their natural inclination to see it as a “day off.”

Let’s take two of the best field trips that I’ve taken in the past ten years and examine them for their effectiveness. Now I’m not saying this from a scientific standpoint, just from the point of view of my own observations during the trip and having the students write a reaction essay two days later.

The first was to Gettysburg, about five or six years ago. It took me months to plan and to gather the various permission slips that would allow me to take about 30 kids out of state. But it was worth it. The trip took place on a beautiful, mid-May day, and my students were more than ready for what they perceived was a “day off” from school. Little would they know they would be deceived into learning, and perhaps even gaining a bit more, from a trip to the sight of the greatest battle that ever occurred in North America.

It took us about three hours to get there, and if anyone has ever driven to Gettysburg from New Jersey, they would know it’s a spectacular, stunning drive. Our kids chatted and some even sang as we shot down the highway, traveling through the gentle green countryside of southern Pennsylvania. The weather was clear, with blue skies and in the low 70’s. Just perfect.

When we got to Gettysburg, the National Park Service took over operations and escorted the students all over the battlefield. Rangers told the kids stirring stories of blood and sacrifice, explained why the armies met where they met, and the role that folly and arrogance played in the great carnage. I felt a lot of satisfaction seeing my kids scale the steep ridges of Little Round Top, where Lee’s forces tried and failed and tried again, and failed, to go around Union lines. My students broke a sweat as they marched across the colossal field that witnessed Pickett’s Charge, the horrific massacre on the battle’s third day. All along, I could see their intensity, their concentration building. After the first hour of the visit, their own personal issues had clearly taken a back seat and for once, they turned to the Civil War.

Their questions to the rangers and myself demonstrated their deep involvement. “Mr. Kurz,” Andrea asked, “so if I got shot at this spot here during the battle, how long would I have to wait for help, for somebody to give me some water and medicine?” I was about to answer, when a ranger chimed in. “Generally, I’d say if you got shot right here (pointing down) during the fight, you would probably lay for a day or two before anyone got to you, if you were still alive at that point.”

At another point in the visit, several of my students, completely on their own accord, simply laid down on a rocky outcrop in the area called “Devil’s Den,” which witnessed some of the most absolutely ferocious, hand-to-hand fighting of the battle. I thought it looked kind of strange, so I went over to them to see what was going on. One of them responded “We’re doing this because the ranger said that hundreds died right here; perhaps we could still feel their presence if we did this.” Supernatural issues aside, I felt great satisfaction at the depth of interest the kids were demonstrating.

Upon our return to school I waited two days to formally assign the kids an essay describing what they had experienced during the trip. I found that out of 30 essays 25 amply demonstrated a deep interest and impact not only of the trip but also towards the Civil War. Some of the students claimed they felt a genuine connection with the land and its features; many wrote that they could still see the troops fighting and charging. But what especially pleased me were those essays that included truly strategic thinking. For example, one student remarked that “perhaps, had General Lee taken a better look at the topography of the area, he should have moved on and allowed the Union army to chase him. Gettysburg, with its high hills and thick trees is no place to attack an entrenched army, yet that is exactly what Lee did.”

The other field trip, and one which I found to be particularly effective at sending the message I sought to send, occurred about three years ago. It was a walking tour of New York’s Chinatown.

Before I go into the trip, I have to explain why I’m such a huge believer in a Chinatown trip. In fact, if I had my way, I’d have nearly every school in New Jersey take this exact trip, regardless of age.

From an historic standpoint, the Chinese contribution to American history is a considerable one. Most Americans do not know that Chinese immigration began not in the 20th century but well before the Civil War, in the late 1840’s. Lured by gold and pushed out of their ancestral homeland by the greatest and most murderous insurrection in human history, the Taiping Rebellion, hundreds of thousands of Chinese men and women took the long journey across the Pacific to North America. They called this land “Gold Mountain” and established great communities and cultural centers, as well as businesses, in San Francisco and other western towns and cities. Their labor helped to build the great railroads going from West to East. Over the decades of the 19th century they faced numerous challenges, from finding work at half the “white wage” to dealing with vicious and violent discrimination. At one point, even Congress struck against them when it banned all Chinese immigration in the 1890’s.

But a trip to New York’s Chinatown also serves as an important lesson on the growing power of China and Chinese culture as a global phenomenon. The Chinatowns of today are not ghettoes but rather outposts, or intense nodes in an emergent global network of a powerful and interconnected Chinese diaspora. New York’s Chinatown is huge and increasing on a block-by-block basis as the years go by. Once just a small neighborhood in Lower Manhattan, it now occupies nearly all of what was once Little Italy and parts of the formerly-Jewish Lower East Side. A walk around this amazing community provides ready encounters with Chinese cuisine, commerce, medicine, architecture, language, technology and demography.

I remember that trip well. The weather was not as cooperative as the Gettysburg trip, but little would I know that would add to the educational experience rather than take from it. It was a late day in April, warm but with very light rain that turned on and off.

I took about 25 high school students with me and, being knowledgeable about Chinese-American history and culture, gave the tour myself. We had a wonderful time, walking up and down the busy, crowded streets. As we strode up Mott Street I pointed out and stopped at the various businesses, being sure to describe the importance of street vending, open air markets, entrepreneurialism and curio shops that exemplify Chinese urban culture. At one point during a short outburst of rain, we all huddled in a Chinese seafood shop and some kids screamed, while other smiled, as they witnessed a shopkeeper chopping up a live, flopping fish for an eager customer. Needless to say, I do not think the fish survived the encounter. But the point was made: the presence of fresh food is a central one in Chinese culture.

Students were met with an abundance of scents and smells that introduced them to the wide variety foods, spices and religious incense in Chinese culture. There were audible “ewwws” and “wows” amongst them as they passed roasting chickens and sights of dried reptiles, herbs and fruits in various stages of preservation. And all the time, regardless of the weather, were the throngs, the thousands and thousands of passerby – mostly Chinese – and all seeming intensely directed towards whatever destination awaited them. Busy, busy, busy…”this kind of pedestrian intensity is the norm in all of China’s cities, from Taipei to Hong Kong to Shanghai” I told them.

We had a fine time, shopping, talking to passerby, taking with each other, admiring the pagoda-like architecture, sampling noodle concoctions and teas. Kids smiled, and a bit later, parents raved.

Two days went by and it was time for the kids to report on the trip. How much sank in? Upon reading their responses and listening to their conversations, especially one in the cafeteria that I will report on later, I realized, a lot. Students commented on all sorts of aspects. One essay in particular concerned a visit to a Chinese medicine stand. After commenting on all of the many concoctions for sale, the student remarked that perhaps we in the West are arrogant for dismissing these treatments. “The Chinese have been using these materials for thousands of years, and the apparent success at treating diseases and easing pain can be found in thousands of works of literature and interviews. Who are we to tell them that this is all nonsense?”

But perhaps my most gratifying moment occurred while listening to two of my students waiting on line at lunch. When one of my students remarked to another that it was remarkable to see how disciplined and directed the multitudes of Chinese people seemed during the trip in so many different settings, a friend remarked “yes, it was amazing…and Kurz said that there are over 200 cities in China with over a million people each. That’s just not a lot of energetic people, that’s a lot of intense competition…for us.”

Field trips are a mixed bag. Yes, they can be a total loss, a complete waste of time and effort, if you don’t plan them correctly, cannot manage the students well and underestimate the variables. But when done right, when such trips succeed in transplanting students into entirely new and all-encompassing environments that cannot be replicated in the classroom, they can be, well, awesome.