Out of the Classroom and into the World: Learning from Field Trips, Educating from Experience, and Unlocking the Potential of Our Students and Teachers

Table of Contents

Title Page

Dedication

Acknowledgments

Preface

Introduction

PART ONE - Teachers Experimenting with the World

Chapter 1 - Slavery Was a Business!

The Visitors

You Should Be Happy with the Color You Are

Into the Neighborhood

Chapter 2 - Could We Build a Poem Like a Bridge?

Researching the Topic

Beginning the Study

The Experiments: I Can’t Believe This!

To the Brooklyn Bridge

Ending the Study

Chapter 3 - I Didn’t Even Know There Was a River

Exploring the Forest and the River

A Visit to the Shinnecock Reservation

The Thesis and Beyond

Chapter 4 - Three Teachers Honoring Children’s Environment

The Where Influenced the What of Curriculum

Each Teacher Ventured into Uncomfortable Terrain

The Teachers’ Own Process of Coming to Know Vitalized What They Did with Children

The Teacher Came to Know the Topic More Deeply Through Interactions with Others

The Study Evolved Through Dynamic Interaction Among the Children, their ...

The Children Were Introduced to Impressive Role Models

The Children Engaged with a Rich Body of Content and Used Academic Skills to ...

Through the Process of Working and Learning Together, the Classes Became Communities

PART TWO - An Education in What America Is, What It Could Be

Chapter 5 - We Went on Trips Morning, Noon, and Night

Lucy Sprague Mitchell’s Environment Class

Eleanor Hogan’s Social Environment Course

The Environment Classes Within the Total Program: "An Orchestrated Experience ...

Chapter 6 - A Way of Feeling into Another’s Life

Do I Have a Point of View? Where Did It Come From?

Contacts More Real

Mitchell and Hogan’s Planning

A Tightly Knit Community Was Formed

A Dramatic Connection Between People and Their Environment

Reflecting on and Expressing Their Experience Through the Arts

Encountering Social Issues and Social Change

Chapter 7 - Participants in a World More Vast, Yet Less Remote

The Contours of Future Experience

A Complex Synthesis

PART THREE - Staying Vulnerable

Chapter 8 - A Modest Experiment

Chapter 9 - A Less Modest Experiment

On a Silent Walk Around the School Block

Researching the Course and Evolving Course Aims: Venturing into the Neighborhood

Time, Our Greatest Constraint

Modeling Classroom Life

The Bus Depot

The Outgo

Curricula the Students Designed

Seven Years Later

Conclusion

APPENDIX: - ITINERARIES OF OLD AND NEW LONG TRIPS

NOTES

SOURCES CONSULTED

INDEX

Copyright Page

For my daughter Anna

and in memory of her grandmother Anna,

with love and gratitude

There is the understanding that comes from knowledge of facts and the intellectual process of working out relationships among facts, which constitutes thinking.... And there is also the learning that comes from a living, gripping experience where a feeling tone is added to thought. This second kind of learning often stimulates the desire for the first.

—Lucy Sprague Mitchell

Founder of Bank Street College

You have to be passionate about what you are doing and have to believe in it for it to take shape. You get that from experience. And you need the passion to be a teacher.

—Karen Kriesberg

Third-Grade Teacher

Locust Valley, NY

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I have many people to thank. First, I thank the stars of this book, the many teachers of children and adults who have given heart and mind to teaching and whose work forms the substance of Out of the Classroom and into the World. I am deeply grateful to Laura Gerrity, who did what she thought she could not and went beyond any expectations; Trish Lent, who brings an artist’s sensibility to everything she does and astounds everyone; and Karen Kriesberg, whose exploration of the Nissequogue River and visit to the Shinnecock Reservation have inspired countless teachers. Their energy, vision, struggles, and achievements spark our imaginations, and inspire, encourage, and challenge us. They honor children, children’s families—and honor what it means to be a teacher.

I also thank Roberta Altman, for illustrating the power of learning through movement; Pat Arpino, who every day models what it means to be a teacher; Leslie Day, whose energy and passion have inspired the many groups of students she has led through the 79th Street Boat Basin; Elizabeth Mann, whose books have set a new standard for nonfiction; Michelle Shemin, an ever-questioning young teacher whose recycling curriculum has already influenced the work of her peers; Lois Wolf, for reviving in the 1970s Lucy Sprague Mitchell’s environment course; Grace Cohen, for illustrating for me and countless teachers how to challenge children’s thinking, while inspiring them to meet the challenge; and Michael Scimeca, for being a steady influence throughout.

The students and colleagues of Lucy Sprague Mitchell and Eleanor Hogan generously shared their experiences and brought them to life for me through their passionate accounts. I am grateful to Herb Barnes, Jean Ewing, Sally Kerlin, Vecelia McGhie, Allen Ohta, Tirzah Schutzengel, Jean Todd Welch, Joie Willimetz, Janet Wilson, and Marguerite Hurrey Wolf. I am especially grateful to Ruth Bigel, Courtney Cazden, Elisabeth Olesen Garvais, Ellen Hausknecht, Elizabeth Helfman, Willie Kraber, Florence Krahn, Claudia Lewis, Wilbur Rippy, Sheila Sadler, Norma Simon, and Olga Smyth. I also thank the many graduates who responded to the questionnaires I sent them. Elisabeth Olesen Garvais, whose photographs documented the 1941 long trip, and Emil Willimetz, who photographed the 1948 trip, graciously sent me copies of their photos, explained them, and granted permission to use them. Their penetrating photos evoke the power of their trips onto the streets of New York City and of the long trips to other parts of the country. The account by Mary Ellen Gilder, Eleanor Hogan’s daughter, of her mother’s role at Bank Street was invaluable. I also acknowledge with gratitude the many people who supported my work investigating the long trips, especially Leah Levinger, Edna Shapiro, Leslie Williams, and Celia Genishi.

The book could not have evolved as it did without the immeasurable help of two colleagues and friends: Harriet Cuffaro and Karen Weiss. I could not begin to catalog the influence Harriet Cuffaro has had on my thinking as an educator, and in a sense this book grows from so much that I have learned from her. For over thirty years she has been mentor, colleague, and friend. She has deepened this book by her probing questions, her invariably generative comments, and by ever challenging my thinking on education as force for social justice. Karen Weiss was my partner in researching, planning, and teaching the environment course reminiscent of Lucy Sprague Mitchell’s. Working with Karen on that course will forever be a high point for me. When I was a graduate student at Bank Street, I searched for the perfect teacher. Karen was that teacher. She lived the process of learning and teaching promoted in this book and exemplifies its values. Her critical reading of drafts was invaluable. The unfailing support of Harriet and Karen made a potentially lonely process a joy.

I thank Fern Khan and Carol Hillman for reviving the long trips, inviting me to join them, and for being who they are. Ever steady, caring, and capable, their leadership has been an inspiration and a joy. The trips they have planned and led to areas of the country and world demonstrate the enduring power of educators moving outward as a way of vitalizing learning and teaching.

I also acknowledge the students who participated in the curriculum course Karen Weiss and I developed. Getting in touch with them after seven years was a pleasure. I thank them for giving the time and thought to writing about their experience of the course and its impact. Special thanks to my colleagues and students at Bank Street College for the many conversations we have had during my years of working there. Their influence is everywhere present in the book. For their passion as educators I am ever grateful. The ultimate form of this book was influenced by the inspiring work of Dorothy Carter, Miriam Cohen, and Nina Jaffe, whose fiction and folklore embody the power of story.

Marc Favreau, my editor at The New Press, encouraged me from the time when the book was an idea right through its completion. I am grateful for how he so patiently, and subtly, guided my work. His sensitive reading and ever-generative recommendations were invaluable.

My wife, Nancy, has encouraged me throughout and has helped me maintain a sense of humor, especially about myself. My father’s stories of growing up during the Depression made the 1930s real and vivid for me.

And finally, I am grateful to Mr. Albok the tailor, who taught a group of six- and seven-year-olds how to sew a button and so much more.

PREFACE: EVERYONE SHOULD KNOW HOW TO SEW A BUTTON

We began with walks in our Manhattan neighborhood: on the school block, around the block, to the avenue filled with small stores, over to the East River, into Central Park. All the while I saw the neighborhood through the eyes of my first and second graders. While investigating the types of stores around the block, I noticed that the children were particularly interested in the tailor shop, the shoe repair, and the florist. Perhaps it was the cat in the window or all the plants or all the black-and-white photos on display that attracted the children to the tailor. For many of the children the draw to the shoe repair was the window display model of an impossibly large shoe. Almost in unison they asked if it was real. I think it was the florist’s massive arrangements of fall flowers and autumn leaves and multicolored corn stalks that captured their interest.

I thought this would be a good opportunity to visit work sites in the neighborhood, so I visited the shops myself, explaining that we were learning about the work done in the neighborhood, and arranged three simultaneous trips. Before I left the tailor shop, the tailor said he wanted to teach the children how to sew a button.

I would take a third of the class to the tailor, my assistant would bring a group to the florist, and, because the shoemaker was more fluent in Greek than English, a good friend who spoke Greek and was also a teacher would bring the third group to the shoe repair. Before going, each of the groups met to plan the trip. In each group, children discussed what they thought they would see and developed a small list of questions for the shopkeeper; even though we worked in separate groups and hadn’t done this before, the questions of each group were surprisingly similar. I wrote each question on a small strip of paper and handed it to the child who asked the question. Though some children couldn’t read yet, they were able to read their question. These were their questions for the tailor: How big is your washing machine? Why do we need a tailor? How did you learn how to do your job? Do you like your job? Do you have any children?

Equipped with clipboards and pencils for sketching, we set off. When we arrived at the shop, the tailor greeted us at the door, asked us to please take off our coats and rest them on the chairs, locked the door, turned his door sign around to display the word Closed, and pulled the shade down. Though it was only late November, it was especially cold that year, and, as we watched him pull the door shade, through the large window we saw the first snow of the season blanket the street we had just been on.

Mr. Albok went to stand behind his counter and we gathered around him. As I looked at the children and Mr. Albok, I was struck by how small and young these children were. Mr. Albok was over six feet tall and in his eighties. It was at this moment that one child looked up at him and asked, How large is your washing machine?

Mr. Albok responded, I don’t have a washing machine! If you want your clothes washed, go to a laundry. If you want your clothes made, come to me, a tailor.

Another child asked, Why do we need a tailor?

Mr. Albok responded, What were you wearing when you were born?

They all responded, Nothing, and to this he said, That is why we need a tailor.

A child asked, How did you learn how to do your job?

Mr. Albok thought for a minute and said, I come from a country far away from here, Hungary. When I was a boy, in that country, the son learned his father’s work. My father was a tailor, a master tailor, and I learned this work from him.

Do you like your job?

When asked this question, Mr. Albok looked intensely at each of the children and said, "I love my job, and I want to tell you something very important. Make sure that you too love what you choose to do."

Do you have any children?

Upon hearing this question, Mr. Albok reached under his counter and showed us a large black-and-white photo of a young woman, his daughter. The children responded, She’s very beautiful. And he added, Yes, she is very beautiful.

At that moment, he held a piece of black cloth in his hand and said, Before you leave, I want to teach you something very important: how to sew a button. Everyone should know how to sew a button. Too many people walk around with missing buttons or buttons hanging off.

Holding a pair of large scissors the way only a skilled craftsperson does, he quickly cut the cloth into the shape of a small coat about nine inches long and, as though magically, threaded a needle and began to sew a button. With the tips of his fingers, he made a small space between the button and the cloth, so that it won’t snap off or loosen, sewed it to the cloth allowing for the space, and then wound the thread many times around the connecting threads so that it’s strong and won’t pop off. He handed the coat with its well-secured button to me.

Following the three simultaneous trips, children discussed, drew, and wrote about their experiences. The six-year-old who drew this picture wrote: I liked the man in the tailor shop. He sewed a button on a piece of pattern.

With Mr. Albok’s permission, children began to sketch things they found interesting: his tools, the cat, all the plants, the many photographs, and the mannequin dressed in a silk tuxedo. When Mr. Albok saw a small group gather around the mannequin, he wheeled it forward, rubbed his hand across the rich fabric, and said, This is a tailor’s Mona Lisa. I did this when I was much younger. He then followed the children as they sketched and said to them, It is very important what you are doing. Too many people stop drawing as they grow up. If you would give me your drawings when you are done, I will send them to my relatives in Hungary so they will know what my shop looks like. The children were ready to tear the sheets off their boards on the spot. I explained to Mr. Albok that these would be used to share with other classmates and as material for more finished drawings in the classroom. At that point, if the children wished—which they all did—we would gladly give the sketches to him.

We thanked Mr. Albok, put on our coats, made our way through what looked like seven inches of snow, and returned to school with our sketches and the little coat with the button. The other groups carried scraps of stitched and nailed leather and a beautiful flower arrangement. In the classroom, all the children, red faced from the snow, excitedly shared their gifts and stories.

Introduction

Mr. Albok and those first and second graders have come back to me again and again throughout my career in education and, in a sense, inspired this book. That trip symbolized what I wanted for children, their teachers, and myself. Before this trip, I had taken children on walking trips in the neighborhood. We walked the school block and on another day walked around the block, discovering so much that we had never noticed before, including a veterinarian’s office and two other schools, all on our school block, which many of us, including myself, had never noticed before. We walked to the street island in the middle of Park Avenue and 116th Street that overlooks the spot where the Metro North speeds into and exits the tunnel. Each time a train approached the tunnel and was virtually directly below the children, the children waved to the conductor. He waved back and tooted his whistle, while the children screamed with excitement. On a crisp, clear fall day we walked to the East River, observed the boats on the river, crossed the pedestrian bridge at 96th Street, and picnicked on Wards Island. It all went perfectly until we took out our lunch. We were vividly reminded of the science teacher’s lesson on the signs of fall when a swarm of yellow jackets descended on the children’s food. I couldn’t believe that I was picking them off the children’s sandwiches and drinks with my fingers and didn’t get stung; but one child was stung—and for the rest of the day proudly showed everyone the red mark.

We examined the stores around the school block, which led to the simultaneous trips to meet the tailor, the shoemaker, and the florist. At the shoe repair, the shoemaker let each of the children operate the various machines, stitching and nailing the leather. They especially loved ejecting nails of different lengths simply by turning the dial to the desired length. The florist told the children that the shop had been in the family from the time of his grandfather. He slowly and carefully made an arrangement for the class, explaining why specific flowers are selected and how they are trimmed and assembled into an arrangement. As with the tailor’s little coat, the other groups returned to school with gifts—pieces of thick, hard leather they had stitched and nailed, and a fall flower arrangement, filled with bright yellow mums and autumn leaves. Little wonder they were so excited to share their experiences. The next day the children drew pictures of what they found most interesting and wrote about it, and each group wrote a thank-you letter. The pictures and writing were assembled into books. Two children from each group brought its book to share with the shopkeeper, delivered the letter, and, for Mr. Albok, delivered the trip sketches for his relatives in Hungary.

The six-year-old who proudly showed everyone the sting mark drew his stung hand and the culprit yellow jacket. He wrote: The bee stung me on the finger!

The children who went to the shoe repair shop were excited to tell their classmates that they had operated the nail machine. The seven-year-old who drew this worked hard to make the machine look real. She wrote: This is me working the nail machine.

This seven-year-old carefully rendered each detail of the florist shop. He wrote: The florist gave us a bouquet of flowers free! He was very nice.

All of the neighborhood trips that preceded these three were engaging and important but were different in tone and depth of encounter. This was the first time for me as a teacher and the first time for the class that year that we traveled to meet people and learn from them about their work. When I reflected on the experience, I realized that the three simultaneous trips furthered our study of the neighborhood and the city in ways I had hoped for and in ways I had never anticipated. As I had hoped, the children had used reading, writing, and drawing to record their impressions and extend their understanding of the experience. They had learned that their questions were important and that they themselves could obtain answers. The class became a forum for sharing individual experiences of a trip, thereby enlarging everyone’s experience. They saw how work done by people in the neighborhood was connected to them and their families. What I discovered from these three trips, and from so many that followed, was that the people we interviewed embodied the ethic of their work and so generously offered to the children models of competence, which I believe sparked their imaginations, and may have influenced their lives. Also at a time when New York City was not as safe as it is today, when the news was full of violent drug-related crimes and street muggings, children were learning that there were aspects of their world that they could trust and build on.

My Background: The Sources of This Book

Taking trips grew directly from my course work and fieldwork experiences as a master’s degree student at Bank Street College in the early 1970s. I now realize how fortunate I was to enter education at that time. In How Teachers Taught: Constancy and Change in American Classrooms, Larry Cuban called the mid-1960s to mid-’70s the second wave of progressivism in American education, the first being the 1920s–’30s.¹ With the excitement over Head Start, the British Infant Schools, and the open classroom movement, it was a period of ferment, promise, and experimentation, especially for teachers interested in the early childhood and early primary years. And I felt a part of the ferment and promise. Instead of the current mantra, How can we raise children’s test scores? people were asking, What is important for children to learn and how should they learn it?

The Environment Class

My imagination was fueled by the pervasive sense of possibility. For me, the possibility was made concrete by the belief, which permeated my graduate experience, that education should move the learner outward physically and socially, as well as intellectually. It was specifically in the class Environment: Core of the Early Childhood and Elementary Curriculum that the belief crystallized for me. Lucy Sprague Mitchell, who founded Bank Street, created the original course in 1930. After years of neglect, the course was revived amid the excitement over the British Infant Schools and the open classroom movement. I enrolled in the first rerun of the course, which spanned June and July 1973. Together, the instructor and students ventured outside to explore the neighborhood and followed a chain of food from local stores backward to large wholesale markets and farms. We walked to the Hudson River, which was just down the block, across Riverside Park, and by train followed the river north—throughout connecting what we experienced to the geography of an island city. And we also ventured behind the scenes into the workings of the college building itself, getting to know about the work that sustained our experience there from the people who did that work. In the classroom at the college, we discussed what we had experienced and lost adult inhibitions as we expressed our experience in writing, painting, block building, map and model making, music, and drama. I experienced the intensity and pleasure of being fully engaged in what I was doing. On the trips and in the classroom, we formed a bond that was different from anything I had experienced in classrooms. I knew I wanted to offer children the opportunity to learn in these ways. And we developed curricula to make this possible.

The Old Photo in the College Lobby

I remember being puzzled that summer by an old photograph displayed in the college lobby. It showed Lucy Sprague Mitchell, faculty colleague Eleanor Hogan, a group of young graduate students—all female except for one male—and their bus driver, all posing together in front of a Howard Johnson’s convenience stop along the Pennsylvania Turnpike. The accompanying caption stated 1941 Long Trip to Pittsburgh Coal Mining and Steel Areas, and further described how these week to ten-day trips were taken throughout the Depression and into the early post-WWII years. Students traveled together in buses with wooden seats over a thousand miles to the mining areas of West Virginia, Tennessee, and Pennsylvania; the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA); the Highlander Folk School; and an all–African American agricultural community. All the trips we had taken in the environment class modeled what a teacher might do with children. This was different. I remember wondering, What did these trips have to do with educating children?

When visiting the college in subsequent years, I went back to this photo, still asking myself the same question. I would have never imagined that one day I would contact and speak with almost everyone in that photo. But that was after years of leading many groups of children on trips; after continually reexperiencing the kind of person-to-person intimacy that made the trip to the tailor so powerful; after being continually humbled by how freely and deeply the people we met gave of themselves to the children—and how much the children gave to them.

The Long Trips

When the long trip resurfaced for me in 1995, I was a relatively new faculty member at Bank Street. Now my focus was on the education of teachers as well as children. I was reading Joyce Antler’s biography of Lucy Sprague Mitchell, in which Antler gave a vivid portrait of the experience.² I read through Mitchell’s autobiography