Schools in the past few years have decreased the amount of  field trips for many reasons, like Covid. But over the months, Covid numbers have gone down and schools are lifting the mask mandates. This can give schools many opportunities to bring back field trips. They bring so many educational benefits and yet there are still a low number of field trips. 

Even the students of Greenway High School want to go to field trips. “I think as a student we should get more opportunities to go on field trips because it will give us more hands-on experience of learning,” Freshman Aydan Hammers said. “Yes, I think we should bring field trips back to high school because I feel like they are better than just sitting in a classroom and being told the subject,” Freshman Frank Horlacher said.

Also, the Greenway staff even agree with the field trip idea. “As a Career and Technical Education teacher, I would love to be able to have field trips to help students see the real world examples of the lodging, travel, tourism and recreational industries that we talk about in class. I think it is incredibly beneficial to students to get out and see what lies beyond our school’s border and experience the ‘real world’ as much as possible before they graduate. Travel opens the mind and helps us all to see things from a different perspective,” Mr. Dudo said. 

Field trips bring a new experience to students that is just more than an article or piece of paper telling them what they are learning about. These trips to museum or trails give them a more hands on experience with learning. According to Marc Behrent and Teresa Franklin’s article “A Review of Research on School Field Trips and Their Value in Education” in the International Journal of Environment & Science Education, learning consists of grasping an experience and then transforming it into an application or result. These field trips can give students a more visual and physical experience which can leave them with a longer beneficial impact in their learning. This brings us to our next point about how field trips can have a greater impact than a classroom.

Another benefit of field trips being brought back is the great long-lasting impact on students and their outlook into their future. Field trips can inspire students into fields they never knew about. With the hands on experience, this can encourage them to pursue a job or field they are instructed in. According to NEA Member Benefits article “How Field Trips Boost Students Lifelong Success” in the Nea Member Benefits, a study found that regardless of gender, ethnicity or socioeconomic status, children who take school trips have better grades (59%), higher graduation rates from high school (95%) and college (63%) and greater income (12% higher annually). This shows the huge percentage of success when field trips get involved into education.

As you can see, schools should bring back field trips, they bring so many benefits like hands on learning and bigger impacts than just the classroom. Even the students and staff want to bring back field trips because of their benefits. There are so many benefits to field trips and schools don’t bring them back. We should bring back field trips to the education system and improve our education for the greater good.