True education extends beyond the classroom. Immersion in the real world, outside the school, broadens horizons and enriches perspectives. Learning is also more effective and impactful when lessons are “experienced” rather than just heard in a lecture.
Indeed, you can talk at length about otters, dugongs, sea lions, and dolphins in the classroom at school. Even so, a visit to SeaWorld™ Yas Island, Abu Dhabi, under the SeaWorld™ school programs (to meet, observe, and maybe interact with these marine animals), can hammer home the value of protecting and preserving marine ecosystems in a way that no classroom presentation ever can.
Why Educational Excursions Are Important
School trips to parks and museums, libraries and factories, and other environments are valuable teaching and learning aids. The following are some of the benefits of organizing educational school visits:
-
Make It Personal
A teacher can discuss marine life, animal habitats, endangerment, and how everyone must pitch in to conserve marine ecosystems. They can speak about what will happen if a particular species goes extinct. They can say there will be a regrettably irreversible loss of genetic information. The extinction event will also likely lead to cascading negative impacts on the extinct species’ ecosystem.
As such, a biology teacher can narrate that seagrass meadow coverage might decline if dugongs were to become extinct. Dugongs graze on seagrass for sustenance. As they feed, they control the grass population. They also inadvertently disperse their seeds, aiding in the marine plants’ distribution, propagation, and germination. Without dugongs, seed dispersal will slow down or cease altogether, ultimately depleting seagrass ecosystems.
Students can grasp theories. Some may even feel strongly enough about what they learn to join groups and activities that aim to protect dugong populations and their habitats. However, for most other students, the discussion will be relegated to the realm of academic discourse, worthy of nothing more than a fleeting moment of concern.
This is why school excursions are important. Instead of engaging in a classroom discussion about dugongs and marine life, the students can see and interact with dugongs firsthand. Seeing a dugong swim and graze as they listen to a debate about the threats to the gentle sea cows’ existence makes the lesson resonate beyond the academic level. It transforms the cause of protecting marine life from an academic sidenote to something personal.
-
Engage
During school visits, students get to enjoy sights, sounds, smells, and sensations they don’t normally encounter in school. Learning becomes sensory and experiential, capturing the students’ imaginations and thoroughly engaging their attention.
During field trips, therefore, as students touch, see, hear, and smell everything firsthand, they can become fully absorbed in the lessons. The concepts are operationalized and experienced instead of remaining as abstractions that they must memorize to pass their exams.
Think back to the time when you were in school. Some of your most vivid memories are likely associated with field trips to the aquarium, the zoo, a nature park, or an interactive museum. You still probably remember the lessons you learned then, too, because they’re forever interwoven with the things you saw, heard, smelled, and felt at that time.
-
Refresh and Reenergize
There’s something about school excursions that reinvigorates. By swapping the classroom for a marine life theme park, you instantly break the monotony of the ordinary with the extraordinary. This can be just the intermission the students need to refresh or rejuvenate them, alleviating the stress of competing and preparing for standardized exams and assessments.
-
Adapt and Bond
By taking students outside the familiar four walls of the classroom and transplanting them (at least temporarily) to a different environment, you can challenge them to adapt and practice ways to interact with their peers, teachers, and other adults. They can get out of their comfort zones, bond anew with classmates, and behave in a way that’s distinct from how they might normally act in school.
One of the most important things they will learn is independence and self-sufficiency. Outside their familiar stomping grounds, they can develop a little more street smarts and be more independent and wise.
-
Enjoy
School visits are also quite enjoyable. At the very least (and as mentioned earlier), the break in established routines that they provide can be highly refreshing and energizing for young learners.
Field trips are special. It’s definitely an educational activity and a teaching opportunity, but to the students, it’s a fun outing and an exciting excursion. Instead of reading books, writing on paper, and doing seat- and board-work, they can visit a marine life theme park, get on park rides, kayak on a tropical lagoon, and see (and learn more about) dolphins and sea lions, among other things. They’re learning, yes, but they’re having fun as well. For students and educators, that’s a win-win.
Educational School Trips
Schools are bastions of knowledge and the primary venue for edification, but they do not hold the monopoly on learning. Want students to value marine conservation? Schedule a trip to a marine life theme park like SeaWorld™ in Yas Island, and let them experience actual marine life encounters in Abu Dhabi. Want them to understand the value of Arabian scholarship? Take them to the working presidential palace, Qasr Al Watan.
Whenever there is a lesson or value you want students to internalize, consider organizing an out-of-school educational excursion.
