School in general is wasted on kids. No kid cares about history or god forbid chemistry. You know who does? The person who just became an adult and is about to FUCKING GRADUATE! I only remember the last year and a half of school, because I was actually old enough to care and process that shit. Everything prior was just needless torture.
And this is why I loved being a community education teacher.
I get to decide where we're going for an excursion/field trip. I choose which activities we do. I not only get to participate but I'm expected to actively get involved to encourage my students. I get paid to do it.
I'm literally living the dream.
I had a student ask "what's the big red building on [Street]" and enough students were curious that we spent 20 minutes talking about the building. It's the pipeworks and gas mains museum and I've wanted to visit for years but never had time or justification for the adult entry fee ....so you bet we took a field trip the following week!
(another upside to community ed, we can plan and initiate a field trip on 20 minutes notice. Last week the toilets in the classroom started spilling over and we couldn't physically be in the building, but class had just started, so we grabbed our bags, I grabbed the field trip kit, and we walked to the train and went to the beach. "Change of plans, maths class is cancelled, we're doing environmental science today, who's ready to learn about coastal ecosystems")
A few staff members and I have joked that we'd save so much money just ditching our school building entirely and literally every class is a field trip. Field trips are some of the most fun, most engaging, and honestly sometimes the most effective ways to learn something. Place based learning and hands on learning utilises a different part of our developmental skills compared to classroom based learning, as well as community engagement and life skills developed from getting out into the community and learning how the world works.
But the way America does excursions and field trips is odd to me, because they're often expensive and you get a chartered bus and it's a curated experience. Vs Australian community ed where a field trip is often "walking to the local train station to talk to the station staff and learn about the ticketing system" it's free and is like 40 minutes out of our class then we walk back to school and you do several things like that a week.
You can arrange stuff like that and I can only recommend it.
My friends and I made a "guild" back when we were younger. As we were all young at the time, our original written rules were mostly about drinking and securing the dates in our calendars for drinking. As we grew older, it's less about drinking, but more about keeping dates free in the calendar on which we are excused from our families. So we meet up a couple of times a year in weekends with no obligations from other stuff. It's litteraly just agreeing to pull a day out of the calendar in a weekend. We don't get complaints from the wives either, because they also have their bi-annual trips for their respective groups, or they enjoy a day without the husband for whatever reason. Actually it doesn't matter if someone is married or not, it's just the idea of putting a day in the calendar for no other reason that being the "guild meeting" and everyone around accepting it.
So.. ar first we had a lot of fun doing the kind of stuff that dudes do (riding motors, shooting guns and daring to run naked etc.), but eventually we got sick of hang overs, bruises and wasting time, so we try make at least one "serious" event before getting to the drinks now. Sometimes we go on company tours. Maybe someone got hired somewhere and wants to show off, or they have a hobby to show. Sometimes we just arrange for someone to show us around interesting stuff. Some things do cost money,but more often they're happy to showcase their stuff. Doesn't matter to me. We're here to learn, experience and understand all stuff that we wouldn't ordinarily get to see.
Through this self-made "guild" we have been to places that are not accessible without invitations. Some might call it "networking", but I mean, honestly, that's not what we are doing. Sure, I learn stuff from these companies and we get a connection, and I would be more inclined to choose them for future references, but we are doing this entirely because we can't drink from noon to midnight anymore.
Advertisement: I'd gladly volunteer my guild for testing company showcasing and reviews if anyone is willing to have us. We are 4-6 guys willing to watch you work. We won't be initially drunk, unless you serve it to us. We have seen many companies doing the same stuff before, and can provide valuable feedback if you want it.
In my company they give us all a factory tour so we can see what are work helps facilitate. It's pretty cool, honestly. Helps make things less abstract. When I worked as a roaming tech it was my favourite part : arriving at a new client and discovering their factory or offices or whatever and seeing them do their thing. Very cool stuff, once in a while.
My department actually did a field trip to a steel mill the other day (during paid working hours). Steel mills are so fascinating and I can only recommended visiting one at least once. The sheer sizes of everything is just breathtaking and molten steel just looks glorious. I would say that these kind of events are not unusual in German workplaces.
My employer has their own power plant and gardens and I got to go on a "field trip" to both of those places and yeah, it was pretty dope. They sent out an invite asking the department if we wanted to go check out these places, so I signed up figuring it would be a good networking opportunity. It was, I connected with a bunch of people. Plus i got to see the inside of a power plant, how cool is that? More employers should do this.
I told my mom this story the other day, she didn't know about it. It involves the shitty private elementary school I went to: We had a field trip to the Lincoln Boyhood Home in southern Indiana, about a two-hour drive. It looks quite nice now, but in the 80s, and I will never forget this... we got there, and there were some log cabin foundations in a pit. We looked down at the pit for a few minutes, then were rounded up back into the carpool station wagons and drove back home.
I didn't mind all that much because I got out of school and we stopped at McDonald's on the way back, but looking back on it, what a strange day.
I'm sorry that's the platinum life experience. It's only available to those born in the right zip codes and the right families. It says so right in the 28th verse of the Star Spangled Banner, our unofficial social contract of America.
There use to be this thing called "vacation".
Now, even if you could get vacation days without people calling you for work stuff, people would rather catch back up on sleep or shows in a "staycation" then travel to an old mill.
I guess I never thought about it, but my job technically does this once/month as we have an off-site day and it usually involves doing things that normally aren't open to the public.
try calling the chief of facilities at any nearby industrial place and ask for a walk through. they'd be proud and happy to, unless its a national security type place. if you ask good questions dont be surprised if they offer you a job. often union.
Story time…
It was the paperwork for me. The last year in school i actually voted against going to a fieldtrip, apparently it was a rhetorical vote, people where very confused i was so demotivated.
I love learning new things but i am very self motivated and have no control over concentration, so out in the field with all those impulses i will be learning in an explorative way but not perse the things my school tried to focus on. Especially hard for me was the dreaded bundle. The papers we where all given and would be graded on later.
I was always to distracted learning on my own i always missed the key information. I had tried many strategies but the last one earlier that year “organized group effort with duos responsible for different sections of the bundle” was shot down mid trip by our head teacher who was the same teacher did the rhetorical vote if we wanted to see go somewhere or stay at school.
So yeah the joy was pretty much beaten out of me by repeated low grades and by that same head teacher “detention to find the answers online for the past trip or i would have basically no grade.” which i knew in advance was impossible, i had tried to do exactly that before we had gone.
I'm Still T(r)ippin' now and then...
