Spring break 2011: A colleague and I take my California Literature class on a journey that ranges from Muir Woods to Monterey, from Big Sur to Jack London's ranch, from the bookstore that Lawrence Ferlinghetti built to the stone tower that Robinson Jeffers erected and beyond, a field trip that ranks pretty high on my list of most rewarding teaching experiences ever.
A few times since then I've managed to take classes on shorter, less ambitious field trips, but never a multi-night trip involving airfare and car rentals and youth hostels and many meals. Such a trip would be nigh on impossible today, for reasons too depressing to enumerate: no administrative assistants to help with logistics, little access to discretionary funds or grants, an impossible labyrinth of campus purchasing procedures, very few English majors, the gradual and then sudden decline of my creaky joints.
One day in San Francisco we walked something like eight miles, largely led by students' interests. In the end one of the students commended me for my ability to keep up, but today they'd have to carry me after the first block--if I could even find students interested in making such a trip. Who's willing to pay an extra course fee and take a risk on a class that might not "count" toward degree requirements for students eager to complete their education in a mere three years? The course would be canceled due to lack of enrollment.
Now I sound like a cranky old curmudgeon longing for the Good Old Days, but I love looking back on that trip and relishing the learning that happened. This year my spring break is more constrained--spending a few days with grandkids and birds, then getting back home in time for a root canal and essential meetings. I won't be sharing photos of most of that, though you never know. Maybe readers are just begging for close-ups of my dental work? Until then, maybe we'll have to settle for California dreamin'.
2 comments:
I think every professor who takes students on field trips has that one magical trip that was engaging, educational, and satisfying on a level that neither students nor professor ever imagined. And to me it’s just what good teachers should do. Take the class out of the classroom to that incredibly interesting place called the real world.
Yes, I agree. I did this in a very small way in my Nature Writing class when I made students go outside and observe nature for small periods of time, but I really miss the longer, deeper experiences we used to be able to provide.
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