Current Events: Brooklyn, NY: Grand Army Plaza Field Visit

In my current events posts, I’ll be documenting current, ongoing studies in classrooms around the country that are focusing on teaching students using their community and outside resources. Our first installments, unsurprisingly, highlight some of the field visits that I’ve taken with my class so far this year.

I work in an inquiry-based school, Compass Charter School, that focuses on integrating curriculum into long-term studies. For our second graders, our first study of the year focuses on Brooklyn and the ways that the people of Brooklyn influence its identity (and vice versa). Our study will investigate the transportation, art, architecture, jobs, foods, common spaces and people of Brooklyn, our local neighborhood included. We began our study in early October and we’ve taken three field visits to immerse our students in various locations of Brooklyn.

Teachers enter the classrooms of our school in September with curriculum plans designed to integrate content standards from ELA, math, social studies and sustainability. The studies have been designed and modified over time to include standards, assessment guidelines and guiding questions. From there, teachers are encouraged to use the curriculum plan to teach lessons, create project centers, plan field visits and incorporate family and community involvement that addresses the questions and interests of students as they relate to the standards. We tip-toe the fine line between integrated studies that reach the content standards expected of our grade, and the necessity of emergent and inquiry-based learning to maintain engagement.

For each of our first three field visits this year, we paid particular attention to how they serve two purposes: How do they encourage and validate student interest, and how do they help teach content area standards in an engaging and interactive way. Below is a summary of our first field visit.

Grand Army Plaza

Our first field visit of the year took us to Grand Army Plaza. Days before the trip, I ran into an old class parent who I knew lived in that area. “We’re heading your way!” I exclaimed. “We’re taking a trip to Grand Army Plaza this week!” The look on her face made me wonder, for a moment, if we should have second guessed this trip, especially as our first. “Oh really……WHY?” I thought back to my grade planning meeting earlier in September. Trying to get the most of our planning time together as a grade, we took a short 15 minutes to brainstorm ideas for field visits keeping our curriculum plan in mind. When wondering where we could visit, both to illuminate some of Brooklyn’s history, as well as exhibit some of its architecture, Grand Army Plaza was written down, passed along to our curriculum coordinator to help with planning, and was on the calendar. Now, after this exchange with a parent, I wondered if this decision was right.

Prior to our trip, my co-teacher and I researched the area. It was easier for her, considering she lives only a few blocks from the area and spent her summer eating breakfast tacos from a truck in the plaza every Sunday. Although resources on the area are plentiful, we wrote a grade-level article on the plaza, highlighting some facts about it to build interest in our students.

• 

• 

The afternoon before our trip, our class completed a VTS (Visual Thinking Strategies) lesson. Using the image above, and without any clue or reference to its content, we asked our students “What’s going on in this picture?” Responses varied, but it was clear that our students recognized the Memorial Arch from their background knowledge, and understood that the photograph shown was from a “different time.” They had some questions, though. Where are all of the cars? Where is the park? Do horses still ride in the plaza? Where are the statues up top? Excitement was now building.

The next day, we took two yellow school buses to our destination; a brief 15 minute drive from our school. One of our students this year requires a handicap accessible bus due to his use of a wheelchair. Planning the logistics around this need has been both a challenge and a gift as a teacher. Especially considering my dedication to teaching outside of the classroom, planning to meet the needs of all of our students, whether physical, academic, emotional or otherwise, is an area of growth that any teacher should be proud to welcome.

Our visit to Grand Army Plaza, the first of the year as well as the first for this loop of students (our school loops 2 years together. For us, this will include 2nd and 3rd grades together), was likely a surprise for many students, but was engaging, interactive and fun. We visited the Memorial Arch at Grand Army Plaza, drew sketches of the arch, asked questions about the arch and fountain, and investigated statues of historic figures. To keep costs at an absolute minimum, we almost always plan field visits as either self-guided or unguided tours (meaning, we visit locations without any formal tour process at all). This trip fell under that category, so my co-teacher and I planned to visit three locations; the park entrance, the arch, the fountain.

Engagement during this visit was even more enthusiastic than I anticipated. From the trip, my co-teacher and I quickly realized the interest in history that seemed to resonate with many of our students. “It’s like we’re in a history museum, but we’re outside,” one student joyfully commented. While on our trip, we kept in mind the guiding question of our study, how does Brooklyn affect the identity of the people here, and how do the people affect Brooklyn’s identity. First and foremost, we aimed to answer.. what is the identity of Brooklyn, and how does Grand Army Plaza contribute to it and represent it.

Part of writing this blog encouraging teachers to teach outside the classroom requires honesty about the bumps in the road when planning and facilitating this type of learning. When surveying a new location for a field visit, we do our best to research the area and identify any accessibility issues that may arise.  Surely, without fail, a set of stairs, a bumpy dirt path or a just-too-large-step seems to find its way into our path.  We’re grateful to have a cooperative and patient paraprofessional working with our class this year who has taken the unexpected detours in stride.  Additionally, because our class requires two buses, the logistics and timing of transportation can sometimes become problematic. Truthfully, travel logistics and reliability has been a thorn in my side for years when planning field visits.  This time, while waiting for our buses home to arrive, we were informed that our handicapped accessible bus would be arriving at noon, 20 minutes from the current time. Any elementary school teacher can attest to the panicky-frightened-nervous-anxious-kind of what to cry feeling that bubbles in your belly when you imagine 20 unplanned minutes with 27 seven-year-olds standing in an empty space in public.

So there we were. With 20 minutes to spare, we found ourselves walking towards the entrance of the Brooklyn Public Library’s Central Branch; a grand staircase and set of doors covered in gold images of popular literary figures. We spent the next few minutes walking into the children’s section of the BPL, where we interviewed an employee about the library system and about his job. During this unexpected stop, we learned that there are three library systems that serve NYC. Brooklyn’s system has 60 locations, which operate separately from the other library systems and their locations. If our goal was to learn about the identity of Brooklyn and the people who live here, learning about the great dedication to literacy and learning in our city surely fit the bill and made our wait worth it.  Our buses arrived shortly after we left the library, and we took our short ride back to school to go to lunch, recess and continue our day.

Following up on any field visit can take many forms. For this trip, we designed a center for students to work in if they wanted to learn more about Grand Army Plaza and the surrounding area. This week, students read articles, watched videos, looked at photographs and drew on our experiences together as a class to write an informational page about Grand Army Plaza and worked to construct models and paint pictures of the Memorial Arch. 

• 

• 

Our first field visit of the year was over, and it successfully launched our Brooklyn study, inciting wonder, excitement and joy for our learning together over the next few months of our study. Our following two field visits, to the Bushwick Art Collective and a walk across the Brooklyn Bridge, will be highlighted in an upcoming post!