Field Trip Flops

Once we solidified a daily homeschool routine for practicing reading, writing, and math skills, it was time for our 4th and 7th grade boys to learn in new places. Here are the details of our field trip follies and how we’re adjusting …

THE BEST LAID PLANS

In the land of homeschool blogs and social media groups, article after article shares different field trip ideas for and benefits of field trips for kids: authentic learning, increased critical thinking, and more. How encouraging and inspiring this was for me! YES, I thought – We will have LOTS and LOTS of field trips as part of our homeschool and travel experience. We will get out, go beyond, experience it all!! I thought surely my two boys would soak up so much knowledge that they would return to our hometown so sophisticated and filled up with tons of information that they might end up on Jeopardy for all of the trivia facts that they would be collecting! I diligently went about researching all of the learning excursions available to us in San Diego County, and the list was long. Hooray – I was sure we’d be able to do a field trip each day and tackle them all, simultaneously weaving in a focus on Hispanice Heritage Month! I had them all mapped out according to which were open, with what prices for admission, on which days, which days were free admission, and how long it would take to get there.

Channeling the field trip guru Rafe Esquith, I prepared my boys before we went on each excursion, noting what we would be seeing and doing, what relevance it had to learning, things to look for, the behavior that would be important (ex: art museums are quiet, don’t bulldoze small children in the aquarium or free play spaces, no food allowed almost everywhere, be sure to pack a snack for the car, etc.), and what they would need to do in order to have utterly successful engagement with the content (not to mention maximizing any ticket prices we would be paying upon entry).

At the science type of places, they just wanted to bang on stuff until they lost interest, with no inclination whatsoever to understand why the hands-on experiences are set up the way they are. In the art museums, they viewed the art pieces at the speed of light, not surprisingly the same speed at which images flash before them during a typical youtube video. In the outdoor spaces, they just wanted to run and jump around, not absorb or take anything in. In the places with cool exhibits, they whizzed through without stopping to note what kinds of things were included in the exhibits and why.

Upon completing my self-designed worksheets, I was SURE that on each ride home my boys would have triumphant exclamations about how much they LEARNED and how INTERESTING everything was! Instead, to my chagrin, upon receiving the sheets before going in, I was met with, “MOOOOooooommmmm! Ugh! Why do we have to actually LEARN on a field trip? Why can’t we do field trips like we always do in ‘normal’ school where we can just run around and go where we want and not have to learn ANYTHING?!!!! That’s what makes them fun!!” And then upon completing the sheets, to my horror, it was, unanimously, “Can we go home NOW?!” Ugh… It was definitely going to take time for my boys to appreciate learning outside of school walls.

Back to the drawing board I went to research what I should do to plan field trips for my “recovering compulsory schoolers“. I ensured I included the strategies in “5 Tips for Planning your Field Trip for Homeschoolers“: decide where you want to go, check the website for info, arrange logistics, etc. Check, check, check, check, and check. Still no interest from my kids. Still a nagging, negotiating battle each time. Still, utterly, a few weeks of flops and massive exhaustion. Wasn’t this homeschool/travel thing supposed to be blissful and fun!?

REFLECTING

I wondered what I was doing wrong? What wasn’t I executing correctly as both a parent and an educator? I either took my kids (or offered to take them) to some of the coolest of places designed to engage learning in our area – over 40 sites free for kids on this coupon including: California Surf Museum, San Diego Museum of Art, Balboa Park, the Organ Pavilion, The Japanese Friendship Garden, Fleet Science Center, San Diego Automotive Museum, San Diego Air & Space Museum, USS Midway Museum, San Diego Natural History Museum, and additionally Legoland SEA LIFE Aquarium, Chicano Park, Centuro Cultural de la Raza, and more. Worksheets or not, my kind, well-mannered boys could pretty much care less.

Back to internet searches and group posts I went again for answers about why my homeschoolers weren’t liking learning through field trips. None of the reasons offered seemed to apply. Most articles had reasons like: the pace is too fast or slow, there’s too much or not enough structure or hands on activities, the timeframe is unpredictable, and more. I did everything to address what the articles said from implementing the worksheets to completely getting rid of the worksheets, staying longer to leaving earlier, picking cooler spots instead of boring ones, all to no avail. What a waste of the privilege of great learning opportunities! I was so resentful of my children who seemed rather ungrateful and spoiled, despite the fact that they actually had spectacularly great behavior while at all of the sites!

I wonder if, perhaps, part of the reason my kids didn’t take well to the learning embedded in our excursions is that they’ve been inadvertently socialized during their compulsory school experiences to basically not have to learn on a field trip? Field trips for my boys have been put up as great rewards for a unit thoroughly completed within the walls of school rather than the original source of the excitement of and engagement in the learning. It’s going to be a challenge to shift their thinking around this. Will it be possible?

SCREENS DISRUPTION

Another common theme throughout each field trip flop was my boys’ rush to simply get back to our condo. As soon as they got in the car or on their bikes in the morning on the way to an outing, they were immediately looking forward to enjoying their after 4:30/5:00 pm daily 1-2 hour use of screens for entertainment like addicts working 9-5 jobs look forward to happy hour each day. While having a bit of screen time each evening has allowed me some needed quiet at the end of a busy day and has fostered some of the extrinsic motivation for getting their skills practice done in a timely fashion in the mornings, the much unwanted byproduct which has surfaced is the complete disregard and lack of interest in ANYTHING happening, least of all learning during an outing, between the early morning and early evening hours of each day. Their eyes were clearly and solely focused on the prize of checking into their devices and checking out from their realities, rather than being fully present, happy, and creative in the moments of learning OR play during the day. The extrinsic motivator of daily screen time for entertainment, although successful in a more efficient completion of skills practice each day, has 100% BACKFIRED (Some of you who read my previous blog posts may have seen this coming a mile away. Funny how I sometimes can’t see my own forest through the trees!). Oh, the gift of my failure as a parent and homeschool teacher to allow me the opportunity to reflect, realize this, and try again.

I thought for sure that an article somewhere in the land of google searches would validate my experience and cite how the iGEN kids are so used to getting things on demand and flashing before them on screens that they now have very little interest in the subtleties of ceramic bowls from Ancient China, the type of aircraft used in World War II, or the brush strokes of Van Gogh during field trips. I searched to see if there is a correlation between the two. While I didn’t find a direct mention of the impact on field trips per se, there are several articles like this one from Education Week written about school principals’ perspectives recognizing the impact of screen time on the experience of school in general. It didn’t surprise me, really; I guess I just didn’t expect it to be happening in my own home and even outside of school walls!

CHANGING OUR RULES & ROUTINES

Realizing the impact daily screens-for-entertainment-time has had on my 4th and 7th grade boys’ daily learning as well as free play time – inside or outside our home – required Dave and I to make a shift in our household expectations if we are going to not only survive but enjoy the duration of this school year. We now have a ‘no screens for entertainment during weekdays’ rule. While Cole initially met this announcement with tears, Tanner took it in stride (I’m guessing he figured we were heading in this direction all along – his emotional intelligence appears rather high even if his written paragraphs need a bit of help!). So far, the shift in my boys’ disposition has been significant and very positive from my vantage point, and without as many grumblings or complaints as I had expected. Without the hope of screens each afternoon, there are no negotiations challenging my parenting style day in and day out, and, best of all, they’ve reconnected with creativity and general play. As an example, Tanner took out ingredients from the kitchen cabinets to make ooblek and other gooey science things without requiring my guidance while Cole dug to the back of the art supplies cabinet to dust off the paints and create pictures. Taking the carrot of the screens away during the week means I had to let go of them completing their skills practice super efficiently each morning, but it’s a small price to pay for them reconnecting with creativity and ‘old school’ play.

TIME TO DO IT DIFFERENTLY

After weeks of field trip flops, I’m flat out tired of being the family cruise director, coercing my kids into learning, trying to make them become the homeschool kids I read about online and in books. I’m tired of being bitter that my kids aren’t being and doing more to further their own intellectual development. (If I wanted to feel that way, we could have stayed home!) So, never giving up, and always trying something new, even at the risk of swinging the pendulum back and forth from being more restrictive to more permissive, for the next few weeks, I’m trying a new technique when it comes to our learning excursions. I’m going to ask my boys to do the field trip planning, each one being responsible for at least one day per week, researching and arranging the experiences of where THEY want to go and what THEY want to do, and why. Will we actually learn from what they plan? I’m not sure. Will it make me more frazzled or less? I have no idea. We’ll see if I can get more buy-in from the boys and sanity for myself through the process, or if it will completely turn me on my head?!? Stay tuned for future blog posts with updates on how it pans out…

🙂 Carolyn