Field Trips: Fill & Download for Free

I used to do this.My son, Todd, is a different situation than a “normal” kid. He has Autism and ADHD.I went on 2 field trips with him and his class. We went to the zoo and Special Olympics Bowling. The zoo was pre-school and the bowling was kindergarten. It was a lot of fun, but it was a LOT of work.I have to go on field trips with him, I just do. As a parent of a young child with Autism, it was safer for me to go along. Todd has elopement (as in running away) issues, and I had to go because there weren’t enough hands for all of the kids in their class, even if 2 or 3 parents show up (actually, come to think of it, at the zoo all the parents did show up, but bowling was completely different.)It was apparent to me that my son wasn’t having any real fun at the field trips and it messed up his schedule and his routine so much more than if he would have just stayed home.As he gets older, I’ll still accompany him on field trips, but sometimes, they just don’t work with the family or the child.

Because they’re a pain to coordinate, and often the students are unappreciative or goof off the whole time.I used to plan one field trip each year. There are thousands of field trip possibilities in Chicago. Museums are always popular. So are plays. I could do a field trip every week and not run out of good things to take the students to.But, as with so many other things in teaching, the complaints piled up so much that I just quit planning them and saved myself the trouble. Students and parents would complain about where we were going, what time we were leaving and getting back, how much it cost, what type of bus we took, which students shouldn’t be invited, what was the educational relevance of this trip, etc.If you’re a student, and you want your teacher to consider planning a field trip, try this: Say “thank you” to your teacher a lot more. It will work wonders on them, I promise.

Yes.Sometimes, a single student ruins a teacher’s desire to go on field trips for years afterwards, long after that student has moved on… Sometimes even after the teacher has moved on to a different school. The memories of a single bad field trip experience, because of a single student, linger and manifest themselves in a lack of field trips years down the road.I live and teach in Chicago. There are hundreds of field trip opportunities in this city. Students from several hundred miles away take field trips to museums and other sites that are just a 30-minute bus ride away for my students. We could get to school at the normal time, go to the Art Institute of Chicago and see some world-class painting, grab lunch, go to a professional-level play, and still be back in time for our regular dismissal.But every time I think about planning another field trip like that, I think about 3–5 current students who I know just couldn’t handle it. I think about 3–5 students from the past who ruined previous field trip experiences for both me and their classmates.That, and the fact that field trips are a pain to organize anyway, tend to dampen my enthusiasm for planning them. But maybe I’ll do one this spring. I’d need to plan it in the winter. It depends upon how the students behave in class before Christmas Break.I know a lot of non-teachers are reading this and thinking about how horrible it is to let a few “bad seeds” spoil the experience for everyone else. I also know that a lot of teachers are reading this, and they get it. They understand. If they were told to organize a field trip, they’d already know exactly which of their students were going to be a nightmare on that field trip.