I am sending this note from my Sixth Avenue office, in the middle school building, which is so very quiet. There are literally NO students here. The entire middle school is away on overnight trips. The 5th and 6th graders left this morning for a three-day outdoor education experience at The Ashokan Center. The 7th graders left Monday for Williamsburg, VA, to immerse themselves in life in the Colonial era and the 8th graders are in our nation’s capital. In addition, one-half of the 4th graders are visiting the Hawthorne Valley Farm and one-half of the 3rd graders are at the Manhattan Country School Farm enjoying their first school overnight. As you know, these overnight trips continue into the high school with the ninth graders leaving on an orientation trip on the first day of school (the first hour of the first day, to be exact), the tenth grade traveling to historic sites in New England, and the eleventh grade trip experience that studies issues in current American society. You will hear more about this program in the spring, after the juniors return from six locations around the country.
These extended trips are long-lived and essential components of the school’s program, supplementing the more content heavy day-long field trips. They have been part of the school’s curriculum since day one. In the early days of the Little Red School House the whole school went away for the month of June, everyone! We organize these trips as we are convinced that what they offer—deep and sustained learning, intense collaboration, experiencing a life that is different than one’s own – is essential to well-rounded and long-lasting education. This is why we are adamant that ALL children go. This is why we are committed to meeting the financial needs of all families, as the cost of these trips in the lower school and middle school are currently the only “additional fees” that we have.
The transformation that the students experience, especially if the trip represents the first prolonged time away from home, is quite amazing. For those of you with young children, Fours – second grade, it is never too early to begin to prepare for the trips.
- Talk about your child spending time away from home. What would that feel like?
- Meet a real third grader and hear the story of their farm trip.
- Have a sleepover with a relative or friend.
- Talk about the exciting experience that children have as they begin to venture farther afield. When did you first go away from home?
- For parents, prepare yourselves as well. Speak with other parents about their experiences with their parents traveling with the school.
Final thoughts. These trips are important moments for many families as they often represent the first or longest times that parents and children or siblings are away from each other. To experience this separation and to have everyone reunite and be okay is an important moment in a family’s development. Learning to be away from each other does not end after the first trip, but grows and develops for a good long time. We may miss our children while they are away, but it “hurts so good,” good for the adults, good for the children, a healthy development for all. (I have mixed feelings about the impact that digital photography, Instagram, and the like have had on the distance created by these trips. The children have been excused from some of the storytelling and have had some privacy taken from them. On the other hand, so nice to see what is going on and to have more in-depth conversations.)
Over the course of 14 years, beginning with a Fours home-visit and ending as the seniors graduate and head off to college, your child will learn to venture farther and farther from home, taking ever-greater control of and responsibility for these out-of-bounds experiences, bringing a growing toolbox of analytic skills and knowledge about the world, all in the service of becoming, as we read in LREI’s mission statement, “active participants in our democratic society, with creativity integrity, and courage to bring meaningful change to the world.”