Bringing the lesson to life

There is no doubt that a school trip can bring a classroom lesson to life in a way that is otherwise difficult to replicate. The concept of a practical demonstration or enhancement of what is written in books is something that just cannot be overrated. Dim and distant school days learning about the properties of liquid nitrogen and a piece of rubber tubing in chemistry armed with safety goggles and a hammer, can still bring a smile of glee to my face even now.
   
By the same token seeing a real glacial valley in Canada years after leaving school brought back the geography lessons and talk of ‘U shaped’ valleys and gave that all important third dimension to teaching.

Now, of course, teaching is hugely dynamic and there are a huge number of ways to engage students of all ages both inside and outside the classroom.
   
The tourism industry as a whole has embraced this and offers through visitor attractions, museums, theatre and more an enormous amount of curriculum orientated insights and activities that can support teachers.
   
Some of these are based on geography as in the example above, but I read recently of a school trip on the Emirates Air Line in North Greenwich where the classroom lesson on the importance of the River Thames was dramatically enhanced by having the opportunity to view it from the air. The teacher that wrote this particular piece found that despite reservations from a few students based on a fear of heights, that the experience overall was both informative and enjoyable and resulted in even the most reticent of participants to write enthusiastically on their experiences.

The core of their existence
Teachers’ packs are a common attribute of most, if not all, school visits to attractions and other cultural institutions, and there are dedicated departments that deal with school groups on a daily basis. Shakespeare’s Globe, for example and ZSL London Zoo take teaching extremely seriously and it is virtually written into the core of their existence. Engagement including stage craft, fighting, understanding audience behaviours and so much more in Elizabethan times would simply not have been possible without Globe Education. Likewise, bringing environmental concerns, habitat destruction and breeding programmes in the face of near extinction in the wild have brought the reality of the world that we live in to life in unprecedented ways at ZSL London Zoo.
   
West End musicals, and indeed regional and touring productions, are also looking very much into what they can offer teachers and students in terms of gaining a deeper thematic understanding of some of the content of the story.
   
Productions such as Wicked, for example, focus very strongly on an all important issues of isolation, bullying and acceptance in an educational environment and beyond. Similarly, other productions, such as Billy Elliot, focus very much on the reality of the politics at the time of the Miners Strike in 1984 and shows such as We Will Rock You and Chicago The Musical looked at consumerism and mass identity and the power of the media respectively to focus on just a few of their themes.
   
The London Symphony Orchestra offers a Discover Programme that can include opportunities to attend master classes and talks with professionals, which again can add another dynamic element to teaching outside the classroom.
   
The art of engagement is just that – it is by no means a science and it is something that can very much be learned both literally and metaphorically by touch.

What's the meaning
When I first went into business in the early 1990s, I was taught the magic power of three incredibly important words that still run through the core of what I do – ‘Which Means That’ – the understanding that the concept being offered must have reason and meaning for the recipient in order to have a positive outcome.

By bringing the classroom out into the world, teachers have the most wonderful opportunity to engage all the senses of their students and show the practical application of their students’ studies.
   
I have no doubt that the impact of what a glacier does to a landscape was not entirely lost on me as a 14 year old geography student but the realisation of what it looked like in real life as a 20 something year old threw me right back into that classroom imagery. There is no doubt too that the teaching I received allowed that memory to linger and therefore create the immediacy of the connection between my classroom learning and my first hand experience all those years later.
   
I am not suggesting that all geography students should be taken immediately to Canada to see for themselves what millions of tons of ice and rock can do over time, more using a specific example to show the magic that education can have on the most ambivalent of us years after the desk lid was closed for the final time.
   
Attractions, museums, orchestras, theatre shows, even food markets can bring teaching to life in so many ways, and the school trip, however time consuming and laborious in its inception, and undoubtedly occasionally panic inducing in its execution is, to this mind at least, one of the most exciting, inspirational and though provoking things that a teacher can offer.
   
In the tourism industry, the focus is on understanding the experience that clients are offering to their visitors, including both the physiological (how long, how far etc) and the psychological (the emotional impact of the experience). This can very happily be extended to the role that the teacher can have when planning a school trip to one of the dozens of uniquely interesting and engaging relevant places to travel too within a reasonable distance of home.

In the digital world in which we work, learn and play, the opportunity to look up and around and explore our physical world will surely only enhance the classroom experience by creating that personal and multi dimensional element that fulfils the equation linked by those three magic words ‘Which Means That.’

Further information
www.gtoa.co.uk