Going out of School is more than a ride

Visiting a museum, walking through a market place, riding in the “Turibus”, going to “Isla Fuerte” … the list goes on and on and what seems like a ride, is really a well-thought and planned field trip to achieve educational goals. “our field trips are focused on the reinforcement of the topics worked in class”, says Paula Andrea Álvarez, Director of Grundschule. “The student is the main character of his/her learning process, and thus, these activities allow a more meaningful learning”, she says.

In this sense, Oscar Ceballos, director of Mittelstufe, says that these field trips allow for the concepts learned inside the classrooms to be witnessed in reality: It is the possibility of experimenting and not just sticking to a theoretical idea”.

According to the American theorist David Ausubel, a meaningful learning is a kind of learning in which the student relates new learning with the learning already possessed, readjusting and rebuilding both in the process. It´s learning by doing, it´s understanding that in the formative process, not only the teacher is the owner of knowledge, but also the student can contribute to it.

A field trip is part of the integral formation and it should be adapted to each student´s needs. “For example, in Kindergarten, we focus on the children discovering the world around them”, says Anne Krüger, School Director, who emphasizes on the kids learning that there is a world different from school, in which things are very different. “Every field trip must be linked to the projects developed in class. After each one of these activities, teachers must reinforce what they saw outside, for knowledge to become evident”, she explains.

Even though, the field trip is related to the broadening of knowledge, they go further beyond. Laleh Assadipour, Director of Oberstufe, says that “this is a way of taking the student out of the school routine and giving him/her the opportunity of facing everything learned, of encouraging his/her critical thinking”. Thus, developing additional competencies to the academic ones.

When faced to spaces different from the classrooms, students witness that “reality is not fragmented in knowledges, but that it is a totality: different subjects end up in one single discourse, which allows reality to be explained from different points of view”, says Oscar Ceballos.

Thus, learning transcends the academic sphere and we begin to talk about the development of competencies related to interacting with others: “field trips allow us, for example, to learn norms, for the kids to learn how to share; they encourage the emotional aspects, teamwork and strengthen relations within the groups”, says Anne.

On the other hand, values such as coexistence, empathy, and respect are reinforced. “Kids learn to value peer work and begin to understand that knowledge can also be generated by themselves”, concludes Paula.