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Fun Only Field Trips - ST Week 7.3

Happy Valentine’s Day! After a long week of wagon building and westward expansion test-taking, Team Nova filled today (Friday) with a fun morning field trip to a bowling alley before our first round of wagon obstacle course runs. As you may recall from some of my recent blog posts, Team Nova teachers attended a three-day conference in Florida at the end of January, leaving students (and myself) to keep business as usual with two substitute teachers for Science and Math while I led Humanities. Reports of student behavior over the three-day span were almost all positive, so Nova decided to reward students for their respectable representation of the team and themselves with a fun field trip– no academics required.


Booking 14 lanes at a bowling alley for three hours, Nova spent this morning enjoying competitive bowling matches, arcade games, and laser tag. Admittedly, the two weeks between the conference days and our field trip were a little rough, and I was worried that students would lose the field trip for their growing amount of poor behavior choices. Some students did push behavior limits too far, resulting in their forfeiting of trip attendance and the requirement to help Mr. J set up the wagon obstacle course back at EMS instead. Even the bus ride to the bowling alley was less than respectful, but I can appreciate the Nova teachers’ shift in trip perspective: rather than functioning solely as an award, the trip was now also a “reset” opportunity for students to have fun and recenter themselves before returning to school on Monday. Compared to the beginning of the day, I have to say that by this afternoon, our students had pulled themselves together, and I think everyone (even those who stayed to help Mr. J at EMS) had a wonderful time as a team.

While I plan to reflect more on the wagon competition next week (seeing that we still have a few more elimination rounds to go), I will say that seeing students get excited about their wagons succeeding was one of the highlights of today. In addition to the wagon course, however, I think I most enjoyed bonding with my students outside of the classroom. As a future educator, it is so easy to get bogged down in the lesson planning, student progress and proficiency assessments, behavior challenges that arise throughout the school day, accommodation plans, and so much more that forces me as a teacher to view my students as just that… my students. Today, I was elated for the reminder that every one of them delivered: they are so much more. Nova has secret bowling champions, lucky bowlers, arcade wizards, strong collaborators, risk-takers, and kids just looking to have a good time with their friends. I bowled with the Nova teachers before joining some student groups, and while I am certainly not one of Nova’s secret bowling champions, I truly felt like we are all a part of a caring, supportive community. In the future, I hope to incorporate several opportunities for my students to shine as more than scholars in and outside of my classroom. For now, I look forward to returning to my refocused team on Monday. I can already tell how much I am going to miss Nova at the end of my student teaching semester.

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