Field Trips, Good and Bad

Last week I took my second and third graders on a wonderful trip to the Met to see the Egyptian art (we had just gotten our Flat Stanley back from Egypt a few weeks prior and were all pumped to learn more about mummies, tombs, and hieroglyphics). Julie came along to help chaperone and she was a wonderful help. The kids were super impressed at the beauty and scale of the museum and they loved seeing the mummies, coffins, and especially the reflecting pool around the Temple of Dendur. Many of them have told me they want to go back and are even pressuring their parents to take them back over Mid-Winter Break next week with the free family passes the museum gave us. Highly successful trip, if I do say so myself.

Today all of the third grade classes took a trip to Toys'R'Us and McDonalds (in Times Square). Yes, that is right. They went to look at toys and eat Happy Meals. I talked to my students who attended the trip and they said that the teachers told them nothing about Times Square except to point out the NYE ball. (All of these kids said they had already been to Times Square with their families anyway, so it's not even like the trip was exposing them to a part of the city they wouldn't normally get to see.) I was so outraged at this pointless trip. There are so many wonderful (and FREE) places to take students in this city that are also educational! How trips like this get approved by our administration is beyond me.