Everyone remembers the elementary school days when you would line up with your class, get on a bus and take a field trip like a fun adventure, but what happened to them? The truth is field trips haven’t gone away, they are just much more difficult to plan out in middle school. 

Field Trip Conflicting Issues

As you know at Rosemont, except on Wednesdays, we usually have four different classes a day, unlike elementary school when you only had one class period. Now, this makes scheduling inexpedient because if you were to take a field trip for one of your classes, you would miss out on all of the other classes you would have that day. Teachers know this, and it’s what makes them not want to plan out field trips. They worry that their students will miss out on too much if they missed a day of work, especially the students they know are struggling in some of their other classes. Teachers also have to worry about who they would be taking, would they take their entire class or just a singular period? And if they only take one period, who is to teach the others? Not to mention there is a process if a teacher wanted to organize a field trip they would have to talk to Principle Risse to discuss planning and funds for actually making the trip happen.

Benefits that come from field trips:

We discussed the issues that field trips arise, but what about the contradicting benefits? Field trips allow students to branch out into their community and get hands-on learning experiences. These new surroundings can help students embrace a new cultural understanding and build their knowledge on topics. For students who are debating what career they want to go into, seeing actual adults working in a work environment can have them discover what they enjoy doing or want to do. In other cases some students can 

benefit hugely from taking a break from their everyday classes gives them time to take a necessary break from the stress of school work that they may need to get back into the flow of their classes. Some students also learn a lot better in different surroundings than in an average classroom. Students can gain critical knowledge by expanding their ideas and minds to new extents. 

 How do your fellow peers feel about field trips? 

From a poll from Rosemont students over 90% of the students said they missed field trips and almost 96% said they would be okay with missing out on some of their class time. However, the poll also showed that over 30% of students said that they did worry about themselves or their classmates being slightly disadvantaged from missing their other periods. This is something that school staff has to take into consideration, they know that field trips can be extremely beneficial, but they are also aware that in some cases they can be more harmful than helpful. This is why teachers often encourage students to express their feelings on field trips and to speak up if they believe they will be at risk if they took the opportunity. Even though it might feel like there are no field trips in middle school there are some exceptions. For example, toward the end of the year, most to all of the 8th graders have a field trip to Magic Mountain at the end of the year for a celebration of graduation. Additionally, there are field trips for certain electives such as for students in ASB, and occasionally the music department might have to go somewhere for a conference or performance.

How do you feel about field trips? Let us know, do you think field trips are beneficial, or do they do more harm than good?