A friend of mine recently sent me a text from a day trip to Washington, D.C. It was one of our first beautiful spring days and she had gone down to enjoy the spring flowers.
I had just finished two blog posts that needed pictures from Washington. I asked her if she could take a picture of the Kennedy Center and the Smithsonian Castle. As an afterthought, I asked for pictures of other Washington icons.
She was not able to get the two pictures I needed. (Oh well, guess I will need to grab the husband and make the four-hour trip from Pennsylvania down to Washington to get the photos…and go out to lunch, do some shopping…) However, looking at the gorgeous pictures she did send me, I immediately had ideas for several future blog posts. The pictures were total authentic inspirations. And, of course, my hope is that my blog inspires authentic teaching and projects.
Then it dawned on me, looking at the pictures, that perhaps we do field trips with children backwards. I did the majority of my teaching career in the Maryland suburbs of Washington. We frequently took field trips to iconic D.C. places at the end of units of study. The thought was that at that point, the kids would have plenty of background knowledge and would benefit the most from the field trips. But authentic projects should start from an inspiration. The kids were the most engaged when something real inspired them, and then they took the project from there.
So maybe instead of waiting until nearly the end of a unit of study to take kids on a trip to see what they were actually learning about, we should take kids on trips to see what inspires them, and then start the authentic learning from there.
The Educational Journey 