As a student, K-12, did you view field trips and movies shown in class as a learning experience or a break from classwork?

When I was a kid, they were breaks in the monotony and nothing more. Sure, we went to the Museum of Science or the New England Aquarium. But I already went there with my mom – and when I was there with her, I had the time to really explore and learn/experience. With a class full of annoying classmates, it really was an exercise in patience. “Really, Scott? You’ve never seen a f*cking shark before?” “Chris, why are you banging on the glass right below the sign that says, ‘Don’t bang on glass!’?”

As an adult, I am tempted to think of these field trips as opportunities to learn and experience, but I honestly believe they are just a fun (or not so fun) treat for the kids.

A break from classwork, but usually I learned something despite myself.

I went on many, many field trips as a kid because my school believed strongly in visual experiences for us kids, and I really do remember many of them. Research is proving that hands-on and visual experiences support whatever is being taught in class—kids generally retain information from discussions, hands-on and visual experiences more than they retain from listening to lectures.

It’s not a break for teachers, I can tell you that… so much planning and coordinating goes into those trips, even more so if money’s involved. They’re worth it at the end, but the process is a headache. Teachers wouldn’t be giving kids “play days” in exchange for that much additional work! :D

BUT, it also depends on how the field trip is set up. If there are discussion questions, continued interaction with the teacher, guided tours with engaging guides, etc., then the trip is worth it. You can’t just throw a bunch of kids in a museum and expect many of them to learn anything—a few will, but the overall benefit won’t be maximized.

Just to be clear, I am not only talking about 4th graders going to a museum. My real focus is secondary school actually, but I am interested in all grades. Trips to college campuses, restaurants, factories, farms. Documentary movies in class, stuff like that.

I taught high school for 9 years and planned at least 3 field trips a year—aviation museum, historical museums, science museum, guided tours, nature center tours, college fair trips, orienteering classes, plays at the Guthrie… I was talking about K-12.

Wanted to add… Documentaries are visual, but so are movies based on literature. Kids learn much more about literature if their studies can be supported with movies that include pauses to discuss points throughout the movie or to compare/contrast to what they’ve read.

We also had “special topic” days—during short weeks when the kids’ attention spans are 3 seconds long. Example—for Deaf Culture Week, during 2 days before Thanksgiving, each student followed their same schedule, but teachers would take up different aspects of Deaf Culture (history, linguistics, technology, De’via, etc) and teach it to all their classes. The kids rotated through their regular schedule and are actually learning because of the change in pace/topic—not counting the minutes until they get out for Thanksgiving. This was so successful that, this fall, the kids want to get involved in planning and choosing the special topics. That’s another level of learning- application and synthesis.

Field trips were definitely a break. Movies? Not so much. We were always tested on the movies we watched.

A break? I suppose. It certainly was a change in the routine. Looking back, I think that field trips are probably some of the best way to introduce material to people. I think kids have no idea how much they are learning and I think they remember it more than they remember classroom learning. I am a believer in project learning, as well. I hate textbooks.

My daughter just got back from Guatemala, and I think she learned a lot there. We’ll see, over time. She met people—both natives and her fellow program participants. She did some leadership activities. She managed a construction team for a day and made an executive decision about how much water to put in the cement, which resulted in a doubling of productivity (I hope the cement holds up over time).

Experience, I believe, is the best teacher. I think it works well because it doesn’t seem like you’re in the classroom. Learning often seems dull and tedious and hard. When you learn without being bored, I think you learn much better. It’s win-win: not only does it not seem like learning, but it teaches you more effectively.

@linguaphile I agree about the movies on literature. I remember watching Romeo ajd Juliet, and that is what helped give me a love of Shakespeare. I never like reading, I was one of those kids, but once I was interested in a topic I didn’t mind it as much or actually enjoyed it.

Both.

@JLeslie Once I had a class that got through the Romeo and Juliet unit really fast- they were engrossed and loved the topic. To fill up the rest of the scheduled time, I showed them both the Zeffirelli and Luhrmann versions of Romeo and Juliet, then had them compare and contrast then analyze the directors’ choices. That was a fun teaching moment!

I loved it all and still do. I used to read the volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica after bedtime in bed with a flash light, one of my few acts of domestic rebellion.

Shakespeare and trips to Saturday Matinees on Broadway, all great things and yes I learned something.

Usually a break. I agree with you that they can be really good teaching tools. We have kids come tour our lab every month or so, and we make sure they learn real science and get to see how we do it. I also have taken to using youtube clips when I teach. They are really great for helping kids visualize the way some things work, much better than a picture.

The movies they show today have got it ALL over the grainy, black and white movies on reels that they showed when I was in school!

I learned something from each and every one that I watched. I can even remember the lesson from the first one I ever saw.

Stop, Look, and Listen
Before you cross the street
Use your Eyes
Use your Ears
And then use your Feet

Most of the movies I endured in class were awful. They seemed to be designed to lull us to sleep, and they often succeeded. Field trips, on the other hand, were great. I most enjoyed the trips I took with art classes, and it felt like a break but we learned things, too. I wish my kids got to take more field trips… they don’t seem to go on nearly as many as I did while I was in school.

We didn’t have many films, but I both enjoyed the break and learned a good deal from each of our field trips. I loved field trips because I love a break from a routine and I also love to learn.

I don’t remember movies in school at all, so if there were any, they can’t have been very good. I loved the field trips though, especially when it involved theatre, art galleries or museums. The best one was going down to London to watch a production of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. I think I was 15 when I did that. I also saw The Tempest and Macbeth with school too.

The documentary I remember the best from high school starred this little guy. I clearly remember the moment his ‘reverie’ broke into that run! I laughed for hours after seeing him run, and still break out into guffaws any time I see this little guy go.

I loved watching movies (with real film fluttering in the darkness and sometimes melting or breaking) and film strips, which had a little record that played along with it that went dink when it was time to advance the film strip. The only field trips we ever went on, and maybe only once or twice, was to the zoo, which I also loved. One time, in kindergarden they brought a cow to our school and the farmer taught our teacher how to milk the cow. I loved that. And then there was sixth grade camp. That was fun too. I always saw it as a break, entertainment if you will.

@Kardamom That brought back memories from first grade. They had the cow in a trailer that had a milking stand. This wise@ss kid ( yes it was me ) was asked to come up and milk the cow, just had visited a relative’s farm so I knew how to milk it.
So I sprayed the front row.

A classroom break that was also educational and therefore fun. The smallest cousin was over earlier, and I was surprised that Aesop’s Fables didn’t hold her interest.

Thanks everyone. I found the answers very enjoyable to read.

@JLeslie I’m surprised no one mentioned those films we had to watch for sex ed!

@Kardamom AllI remember is one film in elementary when puppies were born. And one film in high school when a human baby was born.

@JLeslie Oh gracious, we got to see all sorts of neat films where cartoon eggs were being fertilized by cartoon sperm and how they made their way up the fallopian tubes. In sixth grade, it was still a little bit mysterious as to exactly how the sperm got out of the man and into the woman. That part, I swear, was never mentioned in any of the classes, sixth or 8th or 10th grades. That I learned from my friend Carrie who lived across the street.

We also saw other illustrated movies about how a little tiny kid gets bigger over the years and how the stuff down below gets bigger and hairier. They never actually showed any real pictures of humans, which would have been quite shocking to most kids. Luckily, my parents conveniently left books where me and my brother could get at them.

We also saw some pretty graphic movies, that had still photos of all sorts of venereal diseases.

My 10th grade health teacher showed us how to correctly put a condom on a banana, which was actually quite helpful.

@Kardamom Well, the movies had other stuff. Now that you say it, I kind of remember seeing a child growing threw puberty, an illustration or cartoon of some sort? The details just didn’t really stick with me. What I do remember is one of my 5th grade classmates asking my teacher (she was not the sex ed teacher) how the pill works. The teacher told her the pill makes a hard coating around the egg so the sperm can’t get in. Wrong! Bad information even from the teachers. <sigh> Thank goodness it doesn’t matter much if a persn understands why it works.

@JLeslie The teacher was describing the malt ball theory of contraception LOL

@Kardamom There was ZERO mention of sex back when I was in school.

I asked my mom how babies are made. She blushed, looked uncomfortable as Hell, and then told me, “You know what Mr. Curtis’s dogs do.” Our next door neighbor, Mr. Curtis, was a hunter and kept a large pen of hunting dogs in a big pen with 4 dog houses in it.

I puzzled over this. I knew his dogs howled at the night-time moon, barked at strange intruders, pooped and pissed in their living space, and sniffed each others asses. Somehow all these things seemed an enormous nonsequitur. The one thing she was talking about them doing, I had never really noticed.

I realized then and there I’d have to educate myself. In doing do, I got my 16 year old girlfriend pregnant just before I turned 18. We thought Norforms were birth control. I married her, but it was terribly tough. I was on track to go to University than grad school That all want out the window. My folks threw me out of the house for disobeying what they had never been able to bring their own repressed selves to explain.

I’m glad things have changed.

@ETpro I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. Actually I did just spit milk, at the doggy story. Gives new meaning to the term doggie-style.

You’re poor girlfriend probably wondered why you kept howling at her : (

Did your parents ever come to grips with the fact that it partially their fault, since they didn’t really explain to you how it all worked? Did you forgive them for throwing you out?

@ETpro: What happened to that marriage? It must have been brutal. What a story.

@Kardamom My parents never even dreamed they might have had any hand in things going wrong. We stayed on speaking terms, and I cared for them and loved them till their dying day. I know what blinders cultural repression puts on people, so I never blamed them personally. But lord, would I have loved for it to have been different.

@gailcalled We stayed married for 8 years. My wife left me. We had moved to California, and she went back to Virginia with our son, leaving me with my daughter. She lived long enough to bring our son up and launch him on his way, then she died in her sleep of heart failure.

I was devastated by her leaving. I really loved her. But she wanted a different life. She had fallen under the spell of some psychologist who kept telling her that if anything bothered her, just eliminate it from her life.

I’m not sure she was happy with what that strategy brought her.

@ETpro I am so sorry for all of this : (

Please tell me that things got better. I know you’ve gone through some other rough times.

@Kardamom Rough times are just part of living. There have been as many that were mountaintop moments.

^^ : ) I’m so glad to hear that!

@Kardamom Thanks.