Speaking with EducationHQ on the condition of anonymity, the Victorian educator reports his school leadership team has sadly ‘lost sight’ of the true value that excursions outside the classroom hold for students and teachers alike.
Whether it be the financial consideration of needing to employ relief teachers to plug holes on the day, pesky complaints from parents, red-taped insurance considerations, or disgruntled teaching colleagues forced to ‘pick up the slack’ on-site, the teacher says many schools risk lumping incredible learning experiences into the ‘too hard’ basket.
However, when the cards are played right, he says teachers can lock in an array of wonderful outings that really do lift children’s educational experience – while treating adults to the experience, too.
“You have to demonstrate how a curriculum standard will be met by taking students on an excursion,” he says.
“So, there’s an application procedure, it has to pass through almost three chains of command. It’s a rigorous process to pass an excursion.”
Given school leaders tend to assess excursions on the basis of their potential for academic reward, it’s critical to go in with a clear purpose and state exactly how the experience will link in with the curriculum and stimulate follow-up learning activities, the teacher advises.
As a humanities teacher, he reports being able to successfully organise a trip to Melbourne Holocaust Museum, despite a financially conservative leadership team and a reported sidelining of history education across the state.
“If you can prove that the excursion will allow students to develop an understanding of the Holocaust in a way that couldn’t be done at school, for example, then that’s the best thing that you can offer to leadership,” he reflects.
Another point to flag when making your case is the promotional ‘oomph’ the excursion could generate for the school, the educator advises.
Could the adventure be captured on camera and shared in the school newsletter and/or across various social media channels?
“Excursions can be a marketing exercise for the school, so it pays to capitalise on that, too.”
While the real world learning that takes place on excursions is palpable for students, teachers themselves often develop a “real sense of fulfillment” during and after times spent off-campus, the teacher says.
“I feel like sometimes teachers don’t feel like they are always ‘the experts’ on some things.
“And the fact that they can actually go outside the classroom themselves and feel they’ve given students a whole range of different viewpoints and experiences, it allows them to feel more passionate about what they’re teaching, because they get to learn something too, as opposed to always being the expert in the classroom.”
"...excursions really bring that realness to what’s being studied," the humanities teacher says.
In the humanities domain especially, excursions can blast apart what might otherwise be a rather ‘sheltered’ learning trajectory, the teacher suggests.
“Humanities subjects are about exploring all different parts of the social sciences and the world around us – culture and art and connection to history and places and buildings and environments.
“And yet we ask students to sit in the classroom to learn about the world outside.
“Learning in humanities requires you to actually connect with ‘humanity’ outside the classroom. So, excursions really bring that realness to what’s being studied.”
The teacher hopes to see broader attitudes towards excursions and history as a subject shift.
EducationHQ has previously covered reports of history teachers across Victorian secondary schools being forced to fight to save their subject at senior levels, with some saying school leaders and career advisors are essentially shafting the discipline.
Deb Hull, executive officer of the History Teachers Association of Victoria, said the situation in many schools was dire.
“Every year, I hear from people who are stepping down as head of [history] or head of humanities, because they’ve had to fight that fight every year, over and over and over, and they’re simply getting exhausted,” Hull warned last year.
The crux of the problem is that many school leadership teams no longer value history education and fail to understand the rich knowledge, skills and opportunities it hands students, the leading educator shared.
“They’re not valuing what it can do for students, how it improves critical thinking, how it can really support students with their written and verbal communication, their reasoning skills, [the list goes on].”
Hull said she was aware of senior students being counselled out of selecting history, with Year 9 and 10s prompted by careers advisors to drop it from their preferences.
The very real prospect that a majority of school gradutes leave the system without a basic grounding in key historical events should be of immense concern, she added.
“What that means is that they’re not doing anything that has happened in Australia or around the world after 1918."
