Palo Alto High School epitomizes the mess of bureaucratic paperwork commonly associated with government organizations; the logisitcs required to organize a school field trip for students consistently squash the initiative to take advantage of great opportunities.
And the opportunities, if you were wondering, are numerous. Palo Alto High School’s location puts it in the heart of silicon valley, 40 minutes by car or train from San Francisco, even closer to San Jose, and across the street from Stanford’s dynamic university, an academic nucleus of activity. The bay area hosts events in all facets of culture and society. The supply is not our limitation, but rather our lack of demanding these experiences for Paly students.
I am constantly impressed that Paly students are interested in their larger community and are passionate about the world around them. The level of accomplishment and skill that Palo Alto students display in their chosen paths of interest is great, making the opportunity to experience the work of the experts and authorities in these fields such a fantastic one, and one that has the potential to broaden students’ horizons and offer valuable enjoyment. However, impediments exist for the individual attempting to pursue these experiences- we are busy and have limited mobility, making our time and means of getting to these events practically impossible. Most of the prime hours of the day are spent in the classroom, a mandatory commitment that hinders our ability to explore these opportunities.
The vast majority of Paly students never go on field trips in high school. Personally, I have had the privilege of attending two, both in the past year. The first was a trip that the humanities classes took last fall to the de Young Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, where we saw world famous works from the Musée de Orsay. The exhibit was traveling due to renovation, and the de Young was one of two museums in the country able to host it before it went permanently back to its home in Paris; this fact itself is a testament to our incredibly privileged location. The impressionist and post impressionist painters also happened to parallel our curriculum in humanities. Despite this, our teachers Erin Angell and Lucy Filppu had to make a gargantuan effort to plan and execute the event, even after being one of the few fortunate schools to win the lottery allowing Paly the chance to visit; they were told it would be virtually impossible. I would like to personally thank them for their effort, because the experience was unbelievable. Even for the short time that we were able to view the art, the chance to see these paintings the way they were meant to be seen, to be inches away from the canvas where the artists once stood and to experience the texture, size, and physical beauty they created in these works was a series of dazzlingly golden moments. I then visited this exhibit two more times. I am grateful to those aforementioned teachers who personally labored to send us there, because it provided students who would only attend that one time a beautiful escape into a deeper and rare part of the world, a place we have not yet been given much chance to explore independently.
My second field trip took place this spring, when I was given an entirely different yet also greatly rewarding experience with my journalism class, The Paly Voice. We traveled to AOL headquarters for a presentation from the Palo Alto’s branch of Patch, a young local news organization growing rapidly with its own answer to the question of the future of journalism and news. This trip, besides making me aware of AOL’s continued existence and surprising me with their novelty, made me decide from that moment that I was going to seriously study computer science at some point in my post high school graduate education. The event had a profound impact on me. I had a real world experience that ejected me out of my daily routine and propelled me into the world of exciting innovation and change. As a staff, we have discussed extensively our identity as an online publication, and the future of news and journalism in the world. On our trip to AOL, I got the chance to see the concepts so often discussed applied, I was able to see them come to life. It was amazing.
I understand that field trips are expensive. They are a disruption to teachers’ instruction, which I respectfully appreciate is lacking in expendable time, and could be more accurately described as working under the expectation of putting 15 pounds of sand in a ten pound bag. I know that there are risks to students involved every time they officially leave campus, the potential difficulty placed upon those put in charge, and the paperwork that involves. I know that the burden for organizing and field trip falls to the teachers, who we have already established are maxed out. I am not trying to be critical of Paly, but rather I am trying to illuminate possibilities we could be missing out on when we have the unique potential to grasp them.
My intention in writing this is twofold: first, I want to relay the positive experiences I have enjoyed on these school trips and impress upon the skeptics how much value trips like these have on students becoming individuals who are intelligent, motivated, and must soon become members of their world community. Second, I hope that this rallies support for seizing these opportunities more often, when the cost is outweighed by the benefit for Paly students. Everyone continuously discusses the uniqueness and outstanding qualities of Palo Alto schools, but I think that part of meriting this idea of oursel
ves is to take advantage of what we’ve been given and go above and beyond to improve the quality of education for our students when we are able to.
And the opportunities, if you were wondering, are numerous. Palo Alto High School’s location puts it in the heart of silicon valley, 40 minutes by car or train from San Francisco, even closer to San Jose, and across the street from Stanford’s dynamic university, an academic nucleus of activity. The bay area hosts events in all facets of culture and society. The supply is not our limitation, but rather our lack of demanding these experiences for Paly students.
I am constantly impressed that Paly students are interested in their larger community and are passionate about the world around them. The level of accomplishment and skill that Palo Alto students display in their chosen paths of interest is great, making the opportunity to experience the work of the experts and authorities in these fields such a fantastic one, and one that has the potential to broaden students’ horizons and offer valuable enjoyment. However, impediments exist for the individual attempting to pursue these experiences- we are busy and have limited mobility, making our time and means of getting to these events practically impossible. Most of the prime hours of the day are spent in the classroom, a mandatory commitment that hinders our ability to explore these opportunities.
The vast majority of Paly students never go on field trips in high school. Personally, I have had the privilege of attending two, both in the past year. The first was a trip that the humanities classes took last fall to the de Young Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, where we saw world famous works from the Musée de Orsay. The exhibit was traveling due to renovation, and the de Young was one of two museums in the country able to host it before it went permanently back to its home in Paris; this fact itself is a testament to our incredibly privileged location. The impressionist and post impressionist painters also happened to parallel our curriculum in humanities. Despite this, our teachers Erin Angell and Lucy Filppu had to make a gargantuan effort to plan and execute the event, even after being one of the few fortunate schools to win the lottery allowing Paly the chance to visit; they were told it would be virtually impossible. I would like to personally thank them for their effort, because the experience was unbelievable. Even for the short time that we were able to view the art, the chance to see these paintings the way they were meant to be seen, to be inches away from the canvas where the artists once stood and to experience the texture, size, and physical beauty they created in these works was a series of dazzlingly golden moments. I then visited this exhibit two more times. I am grateful to those aforementioned teachers who personally labored to send us there, because it provided students who would only attend that one time a beautiful escape into a deeper and rare part of the world, a place we have not yet been given much chance to explore independently.
My second field trip took place this spring, when I was given an entirely different yet also greatly rewarding experience with my journalism class, The Paly Voice. We traveled to AOL headquarters for a presentation from the Palo Alto’s branch of Patch, a young local news organization growing rapidly with its own answer to the question of the future of journalism and news. This trip, besides making me aware of AOL’s continued existence and surprising me with their novelty, made me decide from that moment that I was going to seriously study computer science at some point in my post high school graduate education. The event had a profound impact on me. I had a real world experience that ejected me out of my daily routine and propelled me into the world of exciting innovation and change. As a staff, we have discussed extensively our identity as an online publication, and the future of news and journalism in the world. On our trip to AOL, I got the chance to see the concepts so often discussed applied, I was able to see them come to life. It was amazing.
I understand that field trips are expensive. They are a disruption to teachers’ instruction, which I respectfully appreciate is lacking in expendable time, and could be more accurately described as working under the expectation of putting 15 pounds of sand in a ten pound bag. I know that there are risks to students involved every time they officially leave campus, the potential difficulty placed upon those put in charge, and the paperwork that involves. I know that the burden for organizing and field trip falls to the teachers, who we have already established are maxed out. I am not trying to be critical of Paly, but rather I am trying to illuminate possibilities we could be missing out on when we have the unique potential to grasp them.
My intention in writing this is twofold: first, I want to relay the positive experiences I have enjoyed on these school trips and impress upon the skeptics how much value trips like these have on students becoming individuals who are intelligent, motivated, and must soon become members of their world community. Second, I hope that this rallies support for seizing these opportunities more often, when the cost is outweighed by the benefit for Paly students. Everyone continuously discusses the uniqueness and outstanding qualities of Palo Alto schools, but I think that part of meriting this idea of oursel
ves is to take advantage of what we’ve been given and go above and beyond to improve the quality of education for our students when we are able to.
ves is to take advantage of what we’ve been given and go above and beyond to improve the quality of education for our students when we are able to.