In seventh grade, my school hosted something called the Pinelands Experience: a three-day camping trip for all students, where we were bussed out to a solitary campground deep in the New Jersey Pine Barrens. (It may have seemed much more remote than it actually was...)
It was a pretty shocking way to start middle school−surrounded by strangers (the middle school was fed by several smaller elementary schools, so there were lots of kids I didn't know yet), sleeping in bunk beds, participating in trust exercises and fossil-digging excursions as a way of bonding with my new classmates. In retrospect, it was the coolest field trip I've ever taken.
October is National Go on a Field Trip Month, and in our recent editorial meeting we started talking about the various field trips we OOMers have been on. They're as diverse as schools themselves can be!
Megan: In third grade we went to the local post office as a class. They showed us how all of the letters get sorted every day through these big chutes that looked like enormous gramophones. I was amazed. Sometimes even now when I send a letter or thank you note I think about that!
Kristen: My 8th grade class took a big field trip to Washington, D.C. (kudos to the chaperones who endured two 10-hour bus rides with 50 middle graders!). I’ll never forget exploring our capital with my classmates and feeling that first bit of adult-like freedom from being so far away from home without our parents.
Brittany: I remember going on a class field trip to the Jelly Belly Factory in Fairfield, California. You get to see how different flavored Jelly Bellies are made, learn the history of the company, and the best part was obviously the free samples!
Mike: Going to Ellis Island in 7th grade is a favorite field trip! I actually found my ancestors’ (mother and father’s side) name on the registry! That was a surreal moment to see how far my family has come in the last century.
Gina: We went to Washington, D.C. and, along with visiting all the monuments and museums and staying in a cool hotel, we also went to a taping of the (now-defunct) talk show "Crossfire." We were all excited to potentially be on TV for even a second! Producers told the audience if we got the chance to ask a question, to just say our name and ask our question, and nothing else. One of my classmates was able to ask a question, and of course, he slipped in the fact he was with his AP Gov class from J.P. Stevens High School from Edison, NJ. He was our hero of the day!
Stephanie: My favorite school field trip was in the 4th grade to the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia. They have this exhibit called “The Giant Heart” that is a rite of passage for children in Philly. You walk through this giant heart (it's 220 feet tall!) to learn about the anatomy and physiology of the human body. I remember walking through and hearing the heart beat, seeing “blood” flow through the heart, and even experiencing what a heart attack would be like. It was one of the coolest parts of being a fourth grader and one of the most memorable field trips I ever went on!
And from the other side, Diemosa, a former teacher, shared a memorable field trip she was on with her students:
Diemosa: There was a fire drill during a field trip to the Hall of Science, and we had to corral all of the students into lines and out into an alley. I heard someone calling my name, and discovered a friend from high school that I hadn’t seen in years out in the alley also, with his students, across a chasm, on a staircase. We caught up with each other as best we could, surrounded by crowds of kids pulling on our arms, yelling across the distance.
Tell us about your favorite field trips!
