I was in Monterey recently and it reminded me that my best field trip was probably our 8th grade trip to the Monterey Bay Aquarium. This was one of the few field trips that was not highly structured. We kids were essentially given free reign of the aquarium. We only had to fill out a sheet to show that we had been to each section, but the order we did it in and who we went with wasn’t important, so my group of friends and I spent the whole day together doing our own thing. It was probably the least supervised but most fun field trip I went on.

An example of a bad one: We had a somewhat chaotic trip to SF in 6th grade, including one moment where my teacher got on BART without us (by mistake—the doors closed too quickly and she was off to Powell St. with us back at the Civic Center). To boot, my middle school class of 2005 was so poorly behaved on that trip that the school never hosted that trip again.

What, for you, was the most memorable school field trip you went on, either in a good or bad way?

Topics: education, school, children, class, student, childhood