Back-to-back field trips trigger questions about classroom disruptions

One week in April saw some students missing classes for three field trips in a row, prompting questions about the impacts that back-to-back trips have on classroom performance.

The trips — one each on April 7, April 8 and April 9 — took many of the same students out of the classroom for each one. Students and teachers expressed a range of responses to the back-to-back trips, acknowledging a field trip’s ability to enhance classroom learning but expressing frustration over how trips can sometimes disrupt in-school learning.

Housatonic Valley Regional High School senior Sara Ireland went on three trips to New York City that week. “To some it might sound like a nightmare but I really did enjoy it,” Ireland said.

The first trip was NEXT Women Symposium, to talk to seven professional women and hear their experiences in male dominated fields, organized by Abby Auerbach. The second was for the AP Lit and English 12 Honors class to see “Death of a Salesman” on Broadway, providing hands-on experience with a Broadway production as the class learned and read plays. The third was for Chorus, Band, and the musical theater society to see Hadestown and The Great Gatsby on Broadway.“These field trips weren’t just fun outings, they were genuine experiences that help to shape student’s interest, help their futures, and of course are still fun,” Ireland said.

Social Studies teacher John Lizzi is generally supportive of field trips, but he said trips should be a supplement to classroom schooling. “I think in general field trips can be extremely valuable depending on the class, depending on what the experience offers and I think there are times when they really need to happen. Teachers should be looking for those types of really unique opportunities for their students when they apply to the curriculum,” Lizzi said. “Teachers should try to get everything they can out of the classroom experience, what can be done inside the classroom, and that should be the primary focus, but there’s always going to be things that you cannot do in the classroom, so we should have those opportunities.” Ireland called attention to the impact of getting out of the classroom. “It can feel really overwhelming being stuck in a classroom day after day and often doing the same stuff over and over again,” she said.

Lizzi also called attention to a disparity in student involvement in field trips. He said higher-level courses take students on trips more often, leaving students that aren’t enrolled in more rigorous classes without opportunities to take trips. While he acknowledged the current data may be incomplete because the year hasn’t ended, it is still an important thing to consider as field trips are planned. Lizzi said teachers and administrators are looking to improve inclusivity. “There was total agreement that opportunities need to be available for everyone in the student body, not just certain classes or groups,” Lizzi said.

But field trips can have negative consequences too, especially three back-to-back trips. For Ireland, the impacts vary from class to class. “I’ve had incidents where teachers have told me field trips aren’t any excuse for not being ready to take a test or be behind and that it is solely our responsibility to keep up in class while on these field trips,” Ireland said. This has made her feel discouraged and not supported by certain teachers, turning what is supposed to be a class enhancing experience into a stressful one.

Lizzi gave a teacher’s point of view. “As a teacher, students being taken out of classes for field trips can be really frustrating,” Lizzia said. “I think that we have to work to improve. It’s not that it’s happening, it’s being unaware that these trips are taking place or that they’re coming up at the last second.” This problem is exacerbated because field-tripping students also have many other classes together, so one trip can disrupt an entire day’s worth of learning.