9486 in the collection
Museum Field Trips Tailored To Teach To The Test
Ohanian Comment: In
the old days, people in charge of federal
programs believed that "those" children need
lots of cultural exposure. This meant on one
occasion taking a bus load of kids down to New
York City for the Barnum & Bailey Circus. I
remember one of the conversations on the
bustrip: kids wondering if people in New York
City used different money than we in Upstate
used.
There was a certain faith then that teachers
were professionals and would find interesting,
useful, and even valuable "teachable moments."
We did not look at New York State Standards
before, during, or after such trips. We did not
write objectives into our lesson plans. The
director of education at Chicago's Field Museum
says, "Those old models as a field trip
destination are wonderful, but they're not
sufficient."
I wonder if she's considered that in
designing field trips to include skills that
kids will be tested on in school she is in
danger of making field trips neither wonderful
nor sufficient.
The best field trip I ever went on in my life
was during my first, very green year as a
teacher. When I found out that my 9th and 10th
graders had never been on a field trip (because
field trips were reserved for kids in the
college prep classes), I applied for field trip
money and I took two busloads to the most
beautiful place I knew of in New York: The
Cloisters. (One discovery I made is that New
Yorkers are often not cosmopolitan.
These kids rarely left Queens. They thought it
was magic that I lived in Manhattan.)
My colleagues thought I was nuts and even The
Cloisters expressed worry, making me sign a
statement that I would be legally responsible
for any damage done. I showed that to the
students, telling them nobody trusted them to
behave--except me.
Actually, feeling the need to cover my backside
in case I ever was questioned, I first took a
trip myself and made my students a sort of
treasure hunt based on the Arthurian legend . .
. because Tennyson's "Idylls of the King" was
in our anthology.
We read one stanza of Tennyson. Plus excerpts
from T. H. White and "Camelot" which I typed up
and ran off on a ditto machine. (This detail
reveals how ancient I am.) And I played a
recording of "Camelot."
Some students were so excited they ate their
bag lunches during homeroom. Eighty high
schoolers wandering around on their own at the
Cloisters. Every time I spotted one, I'd get a
thumbs up. . . and a comment or a question.
Afterwards, I insisted the students write thank
you notes to our two volunteer chaperones. One
note revealed I hadn't done as good a job as
I'd thought in explaining the Cloisters. She
wrote, "Thank you for going with us to the
Cloisters. I'm sorry so many things were
broken."
But hey, contrary to some expectations, there
weren't more broken things when we left than
when we arrived.
by Elizabeth Blair
"I actually think this has been an
opportunity for museums to show their relevance
... We've had to take a step back and say,
'Those old models as a field trip destination
are wonderful, but they're not sufficient.'"
Elizabeth Babcock, director of education at
Chicago's Field Museum
Many children visit museums for the first time
with their classmates on school-organized field
trips. But as school districts face budget cuts
and teachers feel pressure to prepare students
for a battery of standardized tests, museum
field trips are falling off of the curriculum.
It's hard to quantify on a national level
exactly how much the number of museum field
trips is decreasing, but for many teachers,
several hours at the museum is starting to feel
like a luxury.
Elizabeth Babcock, director of education at the
Field Museum, says the natural history museum
in Chicago used to welcome more than 300,000
students every year. But that number has
dropped considerably; she says that a few years
back, the number was below 200,000.
So the curators at the Field got serious about
designing field trips to include skills that
kids will be tested on in school: They started
including relevant math equations in
archaeology exhibits, and added timelines to
historical exhibits.
"I actually think this has been an opportunity
for museums to show their relevance," Babcock
says. "We've had to take a step back and say,
'Those old models as a field trip destination
are wonderful, but they're not sufficient.' "
Cynthia Moreno, curator for education at
Kentucky's Speed Art Museum, says she's fine
with tailoring museum visits to help schools
teach to the test. She knows teachers are
careful about scheduling field trips, and she
says her museum is constantly evolving exhibits
to lure them in.
But Moreno doesn't want the real value of
museums to get lost in the process. At the end
of the day, Moreno says, museums should be
about "wonder and discovery" — and not about
reinforcing math skills.
— Elizabeth Blair
All Things Considered, NPR
2008-12-22
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=98593843&ft=1&f=1013
INDEX OF OUTRAGES
Pages: 380
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