No Accident: Successful Field Trips

Originally appears in the Fall 2011 issue

Last spring, I gave binoculars to a group of third-graders, walked them toward a pond at the nature center where I teach, and let them take over. They stood at the water’s edge and watched a mallard, waiting and shushing each other until it paddled into the morning sun and revealed its shimmering emerald head.  The duck was a boy, the students decided.  They watched him as we continued to walk slowly around the pond and took note of turtles sunning themselves on a fallen log and a muskrat skimming along the surface with a wad of grass in its mouth.

As field trips go, this one was pretty much perfect.  The students had good equipment that worked, time to use it and the expectation that they would be given space to discover what was out there, rather than being forced to look only for birds, which was the topic of the trip.

For classroom teachers who sign up for field trips, and the non-formal educators who teach the trips, this is how they hope all excursions will unfold. However, as both types of educators know, great trips aren’t guaranteed.

Two weeks later, I did the same activity with another group of third-graders and elicited an entirely different outcome.  Students poked and pushed each other and made so much noise that any living thing that didn’t have roots was long gone from the pond by the time we arrived. Several ran ahead of me on the trail, binoculars bumping and swinging from the neck straps in a manner I’d specifically prohibited.

As I sat down to record that day’s trip in my journal, I wondered what had been different about the two experiences.  It was the same grade level, similar schools, same field trip topic and good weather both times.  Many teachers might chalk it up to the fact that some classes are well behaved, while others seem bent on recreating a World Cup soccer-fan riot.

In examining the journal entries about these two trips, I noted that although I had listed the rules for trail behavior for the second group, I had not given them clear expectations nor attempted to create a relationship with them of any sort.  I hadn’t even told them my name.  No wonder they treated me like some stranger who blurted out directions and lists of facts.  That’s who I was that day.

During my tenure as a teacher at a large nature center, I have learned that the success or failure of field trips is far less dependent on weather and the children than many of us might assume.  Certainly, there are students who truly test our mettle, but they are few among the 10,000 or more who come on trips during the school year.  What matters most, it seems, are the kinds of expectations and relationships I set up as soon as the students step off the bus and walk through the doors of our education building.

Teachers and chaperones wait in the hallway with one of our other naturalists while our staff welcomes udents into the classroom and seats them. This first step is important in setting the tone for the rest of the trip.  How we frame the initial experience and the rules is one of our teaching tools. We have two hours to cover whatever topic we are studying that day, so every moment with students is teaching time.

We tie our curriculum to the state core requirements for whatever grade level has come to visit, but we also have some broader objectives to fulfill.  When teaching children about natural sciences, it is important to help them understand that life on this planet is dependent on cooperative relationships.  Across the sciences, cooperative organisms thrive and create space for other relationships to flourish.

A second-grade teacher whose class was involved in my master’s research project last year said she thought such a concept might be too complicated for a 7-year-old to grasp. But my research suggested that using the examples of relationships students encounter on the field trip can help lay the foundation for teaching children about relationships in nature and where they fit into them.

I began to see the field trip rules as tools for teaching about these cooperative relationships rather than lists of dos and don’ts that helped me control a group and keep them focused.

Of course, I’ll admit my interpretation of “focused” might look different from that of a formal classroom teacher.  I recall a field trip a couple of years ago in which my group strolled the interior of the 152-acre nature center looking for tracks and other signs of animals.  We examined a tree felled by a beaver and marveled that an animal that could cut down a tree with its teeth. We discussed which part of the tree the beaver enjoyed eating and noted how a beaver’s front teeth are different from our own.

On the way back, one boy kept stepping off the side of the trail to examine low-hanging branches of cottonwoods.  And I kept reminding him to stay on the trail and focus on what we were doing.

As usual, I walked backward every few minutes to make sure I still had everyone. As I turned around, I saw the boy step off trail again. This time, he placed a cottonwood branch in his mouth.  His teacher was aghast, and then it hit me.

“Are you trying to see what it’s like to be a beaver?”  I asked him. He nodded. I laughed at the folly of my mistake. I told him to take a nibble and tell us what it felt like. He did, and then stayed with us on the trail the rest of the time.

Staying focused meant something entirely different for me from that day forward.

Teachers on both sides of the field trip hope the experience provides children new concepts and new ways of framing or exploring their existing knowledge. However, when that does happen, we must allow time and space for those seeds to take root, even if it doesn’t look how we think it should.

For me, it has become important to remind myself that children are ecosystems every bit as dependent on relationships and context as the pond or field we will examine together. Everything they experience and learn is connected, somehow. It’s just a matter of grabbing hold of that common thread when the unexpected happens. For example, it is common for a deer or wild turkey to wander into the outdoor “classroom” that is our nature center. No normal person ignores such creatures; why would we ask children to do so on a field trip?

If we are studying soil, looking for its ingredients and for evidence of the decomposition that creates it, seeing a deer is an opportunity to make another connection. The deer helps make soil by dropping scat and by dying.  The idea of the sweet-faced, brown-eyed creature dying is difficult for children to accept.  Still, talking about how deer and soil are related can help children understand that new life comes from death. The soil that a dying deer helps create will grow plants for new deer to eat. Nature invented recycling long before we starting collecting aluminum cans at school.

During my master’s research, I studied the ways in which I facilitate such concepts for young children. It turns out that I relied heavily on principles from indigenous philosophies, ecological teaching and learning concepts and teacher-as-midwife components.

In a 2003 article about indigenous people’s ways of knowing and learning, Jeff Lambe wrote of a Mohawk elder who said that one way is through the Oglala/Lakota concept of MitakuyeOyasin  — an expression of what it means to be a human being. “Mitakuye is all creation. Oyaskin is a burning desire to know,” Lambe wrote. (p. 309)

As soon as our field trip students sit down, we go over our two rules: Respect your teachers. Be curious.  For the first rule, we discuss how teachers are not only those who hold the job title, but also include all chaperones, all non-human beings we will encounter that day (including plants) and all students who ask or try to answer a relevant question.  For the second we simply note that when we care about and respect someone, we want to know more about that person.

All creation, and a burning desire to know.

This version of the rules takes less time that listing dos and don’ts and lays a foundation for engaging children as participants in a very basic concept of cooperation. The approach treats children as whole ecosystems by linking their need to learn with their need to be heard and to teach. That is a foundational concept for ecological teaching and learning.

Teacher-as-midwife principles focus on helping students draw out knowledge rather than merely depositing a collection of facts into their brains for withdrawal later. If I’d wanted to make deposits for a living, I’d have been a banker.  So Karen Warren (1996) resonated with me when she included these in her list of teacher-midwife principles:

• Manage logistics by providing adequate instruction time, space and equipment
• Ensure a safe learning environment through establishment of common ground rules
• Establish nurturing, trusting, accessible relationships with students
• Accept the role of learner/participant in order to model desired behaviors and actions for students.

This last tenet can be easy to forget. All educators have days when we’d rather stand on the sidelines and chitchat with other teachers or parents. However, that doesn’t work if we make a deal with students at the beginning that we are all teachers and learners together. We have to get out and collect bugs or play the hiding game or otherwise fully engage in whatever it is that students are doing. We are modeling the exploration behaviors in which both students and adults should engage for maximum — and lifelong — learning.  We have to show, rather than merely tell.

Of course, there are days when it all just doesn’t seem to work. And assessing what students actually glean from a short, one-visit field trip is difficult. Still, as non-formal educators we must try to find ways to measure our outcomes.

The most obvious assessment for me is student behavior. If children are pushing, arguing and jockeying for line position, shouting at whatever wild animals we encounter and engaging in general pandemonium, they are not learning or respecting anyone — including themselves. Such behaviors are a signal that I need to change what I am doing. Maybe I skipped over something in laying out the rules and expectations, or perhaps I missed an opportunity to fully connect what I wanted them to learn with what was happening before them.

So I stop wherever I am and go over the rules again — calmly and in a way that tries to bring them back into the atmosphere of cooperation and learning.

Once I started taking this kind of responsibility, I discovered that rather than making me weary, the challenges piqued my creativity — like recognizing that a little boy was so deeply exploring the concept of a beaver’s teeth, he was willing to bend the rules to do it.

I also discovered that in debriefing conversations with coworkers immediately after a trip (a highly valuable teaching and learning tool), I wasn’t using the word “control” as often as I used to. People who are collaborating and cooperating don’t need “control” to make learning happen.  Learning is the grand outcome of mutual respect and expectations.

In the Cobscook Bay region of Downeast Maine a couple of summers ago, I met a Stephanie Bailey, a Passmaquoddy woman, who said, “If you can turn everything back to nature and relationships. you’ll be OK.”  It’s good advice. Whether we have students for two hours or a whole school year, the key to their success is helping them forge relationships with the material they have to learn, each other and us.

References

Lambe, J. (2003). Indigenous Education, Mainstream Education and Native Studies:

Some Serious Considerations when Incorporating Indigenous Pedagogy Into Native Studies. American Indian Quarterly, 27(1&2) 302-324.

Warren, K. (1996). The Midwife Teacher: Engaging Students in the Experiential

Education Process. Women’s Voices in Experiential Education, 182-191, Association for Experiential Education, Boulder, Colo.

 

Tips for Happier Non-Formal Educators

1. Be a teacher. Design curriculum that addresses core concepts students need to learn, and develop some overall teaching objectives for yourself and students.

2. Start building a cooperative learning environment the moment students walk in your door by using rules that help you do so. Keep them short and simple.

3. Give students and the adults who come with them clear expectations of what is — and is not — going to happen. Help the chaperones help you.

4. Provide pre-visit activities to teachers. These help students better understand what to expect and help them have more fun. Connect these to core requirements so they compliment, rather than burden, the class workload.

5. Keep a teaching journal and write in it after every field trip or at least every week. It helps you keep track of what methods work or don’t work for you. It helps you teach with intention.

Tips for Happier Formal Educators

1. It’s OK to relinquish control for a couple of hours. Trust your field trip educators. It might look like mayhem, but the children still are learning. (However, stay with your class just in case any real problems arise.)

2. If you want field trip educators to include activities that are not typically part of the field trip that’s scheduled, try to discuss the request with the educators before your class arrives. Special requests are easier if they can be planned a little.

3. If you don’t get clear direction from your field trip guide as to what you and the other adults should be doing, ask. It’ll help them improve the program.

4. Do pre-visit activities with your class, if they are offered. If they aren’t, maybe ask for some recommendations from the place you are to visit.

5. It’s a field trip. Vow to have fun!

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Susan Snyder has a Master of Science degree in Ecological Teaching & Learning (Lesley University, Cambridge, MA) and works as a teacher-naturalist at the Ogden Nature Center in Utah.