feature stories

Planning a trip?

Feb 16, 2006 12:34 PM

City public school students and their teachers have a wealth of riches to choose from to make other times and places spring to life.

Visit colonial and industrial New York at Historic Richmond Town on Staten Island or try your hand at farming on the grounds of the historic 18th-century Lefferts House in Prospect Park in Brooklyn.
Walk the fortifications of the 19th-century Fort Hamilton Army base in Bay Ridge and learn about military artifacts from the Revolutionary War to World War II, or walk Immigrant New York or Historic Harlem or choose from many more historic Big Onion Walking Tours.

Visit the past, present and future of communication technology and media at interactive exhibits at Sonywonder.

Steve Chaz, an art teacher at IS 281 in Brooklyn, was more than enthusiastic about his four class trips to the Guggenheim Museum in November. He called those trips and the ones he’s made to other city museums “priceless, nothing better. Beginning with the train ride there was no downside. The kids love the trips and they make me a better teacher. Everybody wins.”

Teachers are always amazed at how much customized help and materials are provided to prepare for and follow-up class trips.

In the performing arts arena, K-3 classes can enjoy a serving of “Pineapple Soup,” a musical by The Paper Bag Players that is now on tour throughout the five boroughs. For a more sophisticated audience, Lincoln Center’s Meet the Artist School Series presents special performances by artists from the opera world to hip-hop and from Shakespeare to improv comedy.

And if traveling there is a problem, Lincoln Center will come to you. That’s also true of the Staten Island Zoo — home of the famed Groundhog Day prognosticator, Staten Island Chuck.

For the birds and the bees, there are all sorts of ecological activities for young scientists at the Prospect Park Audubon Center.
On a grander scale, Themistocles Sapountzakis takes his PS 3 4th- and 5th-graders — the whole class — on three-day-two-night conservation/ecology trips annually. “You interact with kids in a way you never could and it brings you so much closer to them,” he said. “The kids love it and all teachers should do it.”

Veteran class-tripper Gail Seiden, a retired teacher who stays in touch as a Dial-A-Teacher, said former students always talk about those trips when she meets them years later. She tapped into all the city’s riches, noting the Metropolitan Museum’s “invaluable prep materials and extraordinary docents.

“The world of so many city children is so circumscribed that anything we as teachers can do to expand their parameters and expose them to new and different experiences is critical to their development,” she said.

There’s nothing like a journey into the greater world of the city that so many children never see. And there’s so much for them to see and experience that enriches the curriculum.

The endless possibilities are just a phone call or a Web site away.

In the performing arts arena, K-3 classes can enjoy a serving of “Pineapple Soup,” a musical by The Paper Bag Players that is now on tour throughout the five boroughs. For a more sophisticated audience, Lincoln Center’s Meet the Artist School Series presents special performances by artists from the opera world to hip-hop and from Shakespeare to improv comedy.

And if traveling there is a problem, Lincoln Center will come to you. That’s also true of the Staten Island Zoo — home of the famed Groundhog Day prognosticator, Staten Island Chuck.

For the birds and the bees, there are all sorts of ecological activities for young scientists at the Prospect Park Audubon Center.

On a grander scale, Themistocles Sapountzakis takes his PS 3 4th- and 5th-graders — the whole class — on three-day-two-night conservation/ecology trips annually. “You interact with kids in a way you never could and it brings you so much closer to them,” he said. “The kids love it and all teachers should do it.”

Veteran class-tripper Gail Seiden, a retired teacher who stays in touch as a Dial-A-Teacher, said former students always talk about those trips when she meets them years later. She tapped into all the city’s riches, noting the Metropolitan Museum’s “invaluable prep materials and extraordinary docents.

“The world of so many city children is so circumscribed that anything we as teachers can do to expand their parameters and expose them to new and different experiences is critical to their development,” she said.

There’s nothing like a journey into the greater world of the city that so many children never see. And there’s so much for them to see and experience that enriches the curriculum.

The endless possibilities are just a phone call or a Web site away.