For the past two weeks, we have been able to go on field trips that were outdoors and far from the neighborhoods of most of my students. And it has been an eye opening experience.
Last Friday, we went to Centennial Park in Maryland for our all-LPTM field trip. Despite being in the middle of one of the worst heat waves in DC history and due to power outages, our students had only six days of structure, it went really well! It was a beautiful park! One of the students said to me as we walked through it,
“I dreamed about this park last night, and when I came here, I thought I was still dreaming but it was real!”
That really touched me and I could not have said it better. There were forested hiking trails, a large lake and plenty of playgrounds. We grilled hamburgers and hot dogs for lunch plus had bagged lunches from the school as well. My favorite part was doing a scavenger hunt with my class in which we found different nature things and then practiced spelling them. We split up into small groups and let loose on the park. During my group’s scavenger hunt, we also investigated the nature around us, looking at bugs, feeling the water in the lake, and identifying different plants. One of my students kept pointing to seemingly identical spiders we saw saying “Oh that’s a wife spider,” and to others, “That’s a husband spider!” This was just one of the many things they said that kept me laughing all day.
This Thursday, Treehouse Two went on a class trip to the National Zoo to look at the animals native to Brazil we had learned about that week. We saw the bird house where there was an open air atrium that had birds flying right by the heads of my students. I let the picture below show you how they felt about that. And after that, we saw the monkeys and porcupines of the Amazon rainforest.
Besides the obvious factor of the children being able to see something outside of their neighborhood, the field trips are life-giving to this students. I was thinking over how the students’ unique personalities come out when we go on these field trips and I finally connected how these field trips fit into LPTM’s premise:
LOVE + SECURITY + EXPRESSION = LIFE
NO LOVE + NO SECURITY + NO EXPRESSION = DEATH
Expression does not just include the art that these students collectively create together, but it also includes being able to express themselves in a world outside of there concrete neighborhoods. Expression requires inspiration which is found in both Centennial Park and the National Zoo. On our trips to these places, I see one student fascinated by burrowing beetles and spiders. I see another student spitting out astute observations about the nature around him. And one timid student afraid to say two words to anyone in my class, gabbed about the birds, lizards, and monkeys we saw at the Zoo. When we go on these field trips, the students are free to express themselves in areas that interest them and to use technical Early Childhood Education lingo, move from “self esteem” to “self actualization” on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Without these field trips, no one would ever know the bright liveliness that even the most introverted of my students have.