
School field trips
Growing up in southeastern Virginia, there were many school field trip opportunities that could be seen within a day: Williamsburg, Jamestown, Yorktown, Civil War battlefields, the Chesapeake Bay. In second grade we took a train trip of only 20 miles (32 km) but that obviously made such a positive impression that years later it remains my (our) favorite mode of transportation. When I first moved to Chicago there was a travel agency that specialized in student travel to Europe. The manager was a high school history teacher who knew first-hand how important it was to immerse his students in the topics that they were learning by visiting the places that they were studying. It’s one thing to read about the French Revolution and something entirely different to travel to Paris to stand on the site of the Bastille or to touch the walls of the Conciergerie where Marie-Antoinette was held prior to her execution. Now a university study has measured the value of field trips and lends support to what that teacher knew all along.
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