Trippin'
Oct 6, 2005 2:51 PM
An elementary school class makes its way along the 'scaling walk' which creates the scale of the universe from subatomic particles to clusters of galaxies at the American Museum of Natural History.
If you’re a kid growing up in New York City or a teacher in the city’s public schools, riches of every sort are at your fingertips.
Great art and music of every kind and age, wild technology, exotic plants and animals, galaxies and planets, dinosaurs, medieval tapestries and mummies, rain forests and ancient temples, all can be found in the five boroughs.
Millions of tourists from around the world flock to enjoy this bounty each year.
But too many of our children miss it all, locked into the mini world of neighborhood, with no idea of this greater world and no one to show them the way. For the luckiest children there’s been a teacher who unlocked the treasures and introduced them to that wider world through class trips to museums, concert halls, zoos, planetariums, aquariums and journeys through history.
Here in New York City there’s a resource to enrich every curriculum at every grade level. Most provide creative lessons, ideas and materials that conform to state learning standards for art, English language arts and social studies, and tailor them to student age and ability. Many provide in-depth professional development for teachers to prepare their classes for a visit.
In the Big Apple, the most powerful virtual reality simulator in the world is at the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan, ready to transport students to the beginning of time where they journey through 13 billion years of cosmic evolution. The 400,000 students who visit the museum annually enjoy hands-on activities on topics ranging from the age of dinosaurs to the very latest in space travel.
Among the city’s top attractions is certainly the Metropolitan Museum of Art, mecca for four million visitors a year. Beyond the world’s greatest paintings, the Met has collections representing world culture from prehistory to the present. Students can cap a visit to one of the world’s finest collections of Egyptian artifacts with a walk through the original Temple of Dendur.
Maggie Reilly, an art teacher at the Computer School, explained, “It’s one thing to talk about artifacts and another for the kids to actually see thousand-year-old artifacts. That makes it real, creates a story for them and puts them there. The connection is invaluable and goes way beyond the textbook.”
