The experiences that the Hidden Villa staff, volunteers and beautiful natural surroundings provide during the field trip create this magical spark of enthusiasm, understanding, personal growth and motivation. As a classroom teacher, I realize that there is no way that I could recreate these experiences by myself in the isolated environment of the school classroom. This is what draws me again and again to take my students to Hidden Villa.

As a classroom teacher, I feel that it is my role to prepare my students' hearts and minds for their Hidden Villa field trip so that they are ready to take full advantage of all their experiences there. Likewise, it is my responsibility to validate the importance of my students' experiences on our return to the classroom and to integrate our field trip into our academic curriculum. In this way I hope to cultivate in my students a burning passion for discovering more about the environment, themselves and the diversity of human expression in the world.

As teachers, we have the responsibility and honor to nurture our students for only a year, or if we're lucky, two. However, one day we may be surprised by what our love and efforts helped produce.

I have included some specific suggestions of things to do BEFORE (plan and prepare), DURING (participate, investigate and document) and AFTER (validate and integrate) the Hidden Villa field trip that I found particularly valuable in getting the most out of the Hidden Villa magic.

Before

Part I: PLAN

Your Hidden Villa field trip can offer you and your students so much. Besides the power of your students' experiences in their personal lives, the excitement and motivation students bring back from the field trip can be creatively harnessed for learning academic standards as well. Before your field trip, take the time to consider how you are going to integrate your students' experiences back into the classroom. What aspect of the field trip to you think your students will be most intrigued by? What projects do you think will help them most capitalize on their new knowledge in order to learn academic standards? How would you like to use your students' Hidden Villa experiences to support their personal growth? I encourage you to look through the "curriculum" pages of this webpage to help inspire project ideas. If there is a particular topic you would like students to focus on during the field trip, be sure to communicate this to the Hidden Villa staff before your pre-field trip presentation. (More details explained in the "signing-up" pages of this webpage.)

Part II: PREPARE

All field trips involve a few special logistical arrangements. After making arrangements with Hidden Villa and your transportation system, you will need to inform your classroom parents about the planned field trip and secure permission slips (and field trip fee depending on your school) for each child. Both child and parent also need to understand what to bring and what to wear on the field trip. As students will be very active during the day, they should have on comfortable shoes for walking, a bottle of water in their backpack, and several different layers of clothing for changing weather. Hidden Villa STRONGLY requests that students bring a Hidden Villa Healthy Lunch that is good for the body and good for the environment. Even when the majority of my class has been on free lunch program, I have still asked all students to prepare their own lunch for this field trip. With the focus on re-using old containers, eating healthy foods and staying away from pre-packaged snacks, I have found that most families do not find this to be financial burden.

Finally, as teachers we need to prepare our students for the field trip so that they are ready to participate fully and return to class equipped to take on the integrated curriculum. There are a few short, 1 to 2 day lessons that I would encourage all teachers to implement before the field trip. These can be found by clicking on the "Curriculum" tab above and selecting "Before Trip."

During

Part I: PARTICIPATE

It is important that you participate in the Hidden Villa field trip with your students. Not because Hidden Villa necessary needs your assistance - all the staff and volunteers are highly capable guides - but to give you an insider's understanding of your students' experiences. It is very difficult to effectively integrate the field trip back into the classroom without having witnessed it yourself. Also, I find that the field trip allows me a wonderful opportunity to bond with my students. Freed from the responsibilities of classroom management, I am better able to connect individually to students as they make exciting discoveries in the garden, forest or farm.

Part II: INVESTIGATE

Another opportunity the Hidden Villa field trip offers teachers is the ability to closely observe the learning and social behavior of certain challenging students. Many students also behave differently at Hidden Villa. I have seen students who present a variety of teaching challenges in the classroom (attention difficulties, aggression, low self-esteem) flourish during the field trip at Hidden Villa.

Careful observation of these students helps me in three ways - 1) I discover what particularly interests these students and engages them in their learning. 2) I notice their interactions with other adults and students. This informs my teaching strategies and inspires me to try out new techniques. 3) Back in the classroom, I capitalize on the successes that I witnessed at Hidden Villa. Frequent reminders of their field trip experiences reinforce an unspoken expectation to students that they can use those skills I observed at Hidden Villa and be successful in the classroom.

If you choose to take advantage of this opportunity to be a learning investigator during the field trip, I recommend that you limit yourself to one or two students. Don't tell them that you are going to be studying their behavior during the day; just join their group and enjoy the chance to take a step back and observe. I like to take along my notebook and jot down ideas as I go. As all of my students are expected to take notes on the field trip, this behavior on my part doesn't seem at all unusual. I often find that I get more ideas when I can re-read all of my notes later in the peace of my own home.

Part III: DOCUMENT

Field trip photos can be used in an incredible variety of ways back in the classroom. Just a few examples include: inspiration for poems, illustrations for stories and engagement in grammar lessons. More than anything, I value my photos and videos as a wonderful way for my studentsto mentally return to Hidden Villa. This helps them reflect further on the lessons learned there. It's surprising how much more they remember when we have a visual or audio recording of parts of the field trip.

I want all of my students to be entirely focused on their actual participation in the field trip. Therefore I generally do not allow them to bring their own cameras. Instead, I make sure that my digital camera has plenty of memory space and several back-up batteries; and I click away as unobtrusively as possible. Because they are digital, I can take as many photos as necessary to get the few really good ones, without worrying about wasting money or bothering the guides. If you have parents coming on the trip, ask them to bring their digital cameras; or borrow one from your school if you can. Before sending parents off in their separate groups, though, make sure to give them some ideas about what types of pictures you want and how to take photos without intruding on the guide's teaching.

After

Part I: VALIDATE

To truly foster my students' connection and relationship to Hidden Villa, I always dedicate at least the first couple hours of the morning after the field trip to reflection and sharing. Although this sometimes seems challenging with all the other things going on in our classrooms, I have found it a powerful way to validate the importance of my students' learning, feelings and sense of discovery during the field trip. This dedication of time also helps prepare students to use their Hidden Villa experiences in classroom academic learning. If you would like some ideas about how to facilitate this activity with your students, click on "First Morning" in the navigation side bar.

Another component of validating my students' experiences is a homework assignment on the night of the field trip. I instruct my students that they need to tell at least two people in their families about the field trip. Students whose families aren't at home at night can call family members or family friends. The following morning we have a class share. Students report on the reaction of their families and friends to the field trip stories.

Part II: INTEGRATE

The lasting impact of this field trip entirely depends on the creativity of the teacher to integrate the hands-on experiences at Hidden Villa with the academic work students need to become proficient with in school. Time and time again I find that integrating my students' Hidden Villa experiences into our standards-based curriculum makes my teaching job easier and more enjoyable. Students are generally excited about their relationship to Hidden Villa and demonstrate heightened motivation to participate in projects relating to Hidden Villa. This means that as a teacher I can focus more on teaching academic skills than on maintaining student interest. The hands-on quality of the Hidden Villa field trip provides a concrete reference point from which students can expand into understanding of broader concepts. Because we all participate in the field trip together, we can use our shared experiences and collective knowledge to support each other in the academic learning during integrated projects. This heightens the effectiveness of the student collaboration and my own teaching.