Sarah Lawrence studies importance of field trips

YONKERS - Cedar Place Elementary School is less than a mile away from the Hudson River, but Carley Reidy said many of her second-grade students had never seen the waterway before.

That changed after the Yonkers teacher took them on a field trip to the Center for the Urban River at Beczak. CURB, an education center affiliated with Sarah Lawrence College, sits on the Hudson River in Yonkers and provides opportunities for children, families and researchers.

“It’s such a different opportunity and learning experience for them being so hands-on,” Reidy said of the field trips. “They’re excited, they’re talking about what they’re learning and they’re engaged.”

In 2015 and 2016, Lars Freeman, a Sarah Lawrence graduate student in the college’s Art of Teaching program, surveyed and observed 1,210 students from dozens of schools, including Yonkers, Edgemont and Peekskill, who attended field trips at CURB, the Teatown Lake Reservation in Ossining or the Westmoreland Sanctuary in Mount Kisco.

“I was genuinely surprised to find out that there was this huge positive correlation” between the field trips and student learning, Freeman said.

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The two-year study, which is expected to be published soon, was made possible with two roughly $10,000 grants from the Hudson River Estuary Program with the state Department of Environmental Conservation and state Water Resources Institute at Cornell University.

As part of the research, students ranging from second to sixth grades, filled out surveys before and after field trips that asked questions about the Hudson River. Before the trips, students’ answers showed they were largely unsure about where the river started and ended, what kind of water it was and drew the river with images of trash and pollution.

The same surveys answered by students after field trips showed they were more likely to correctly answer the questions, and instead drew pictures of the waterway containing indigenous creatures like blue crabs and American eel.

Kathleen Ruen, acting director of the Sarah Lawrence teaching program, said between the surveys and Freeman’s observations, it was clear students took a lot away from the field trips.

“They’re seeing that connection between what’s in the classroom and what they’re seeing on the Smart board, but then they go in and actually experience it hands-on,” Ruen said.

Victoria Garufi, director of education at CURB, said she hopes the study’s findings will encourage more teachers and school districts to invest in field trips.

Schools "have every conflict with trying to get here — there’s not enough bus money, there’s not enough time in the day, but it is valuable," she said. "We all know field trips, out of the classroom experience — that's what you need to do."

In Peekskill, Assistant Superintendent for Business Robin Zimmerman said despite financial constraints, the district has sought to expand its budget for outside-the-classroom experiences, like the Hudson River trips, college tours, and going to the city to see a Broadway show.

In recent years, Zimmerman said the district’s Parent Teacher Organization has been a big proponent of outside learning opportunities and has helped raise money to fund them.

“Something that we really try to incorporate in our budget development model is to give as many experiences as possible that they wouldn’t normally have,” Zimmerman said. “Giving kids more of an engaging and enriching opportunity … is an integral part of the educational program.”

Yonkers schools Superintendent Edwin Quezada said the field trip experience is an important expansion of the classroom and is worth the at-times costly expense.

"It’s about exposing children, it’s about taking them out of their element and providing hands-on experience," Quezada said. "Is it expensive? Absolutely ... but ultimately, if we believe that our children need to be exposed to different learning opportunities, then we will be creative and make it happen."

For teachers, constraints can be the need to adhere to tests and curriculum. Reidy, the second grade Yonkers teacher, tries to make her classroom experience align with what the kids will see at the science center, and a lot of times the students catch what they have spent time researching.

In addition, she said the classroom and field trip experience combines useful skills in English language arts and and math.

"They're problem-solving, reading, writing, they're using mathematical concepts for data gathering and analysis," Reidy said. "Even though it's not in the format of a standardized test, they're using the skill that they need to be successful on any test."