Walls Plans to Administer Increased Numbers of Field Trips this Year, but how?

If you search School Without Walls on your average commercial search engine, the SWW DC Gov. school profile will be one of the first things you find. It provides an overview of the school, a brief history, and several achievements. It concludes this description by saying that Walls uses “the city and the world as a classroom for students.” 

SWW plans to enforce that thinking this year with an increased number of field trips and guest speakers in their classes. One field trip or guest speaker per semester, per class, to be exact. 

The hope is that by allowing students to study in real-world settings, they will grow academically, while also being exposed to learning done outside the classroom. 

“Students should have meaningful opportunities to connect what they’re doing outside of class [to the real world].” Said Adam Vrooman, who was a teacher representative at the LSAT (Local School Advisory Team) meeting where this objective was discussed. 

He explained that “the goal of guest speakers is to try to ensure that students have plenty of real world connections and opportunities to make significant parallels between what they’re learning in class and experts in the field”. Mr. Vrooman additionally added that this could help students “gain a more diverse perspective of a topic.”

Given that SWW is situated in a hub of museums and monuments, this should, hypothetically, be fairly achievable. 

Regardless, there are unexpected ways teachers could follow the guideline, without having students leave from, or someone come to, the classroom.

Pre recorded speeches, TED Talks, connection via email, video submissions, and virtual field trips are all possibilities that fit within the loose guideline. However, not all students are thrilled about this possibility.

“I don’t think that things such as virtual field trips or TED talks are the same as a traditional field trip.” Said Emmon Bowie (‘28) “I don’t think they have as significant of an impact on students.”

Although the idea of a field trip done inside the classroom may not be as appealing to some students, the consensus regarding the objective is positive.

“Field trips are really fun, and it’s nice to get out of the school building,” said Audrey Hayes (‘27). She added that “guest speakers can inspire students on what type of person they want to be when they get older. Field trips can also expose students to inspiration”.

Walls students agree that field trips can be a unique experience that prompt further academic and social development. As well as that, the goal of one field trip or guest speaker per semester is completely reasonable. For that majority, we can hope that this idea is implemented, and that we have an increased number of out-of-classroom learning opportunities in the near future.