Whether it be due to budgetary issues, safety concerns, or simply distance, sometimes it’s just not feasible to take your students out into the world beyond the school gates, but, thankfully, Discovery Education is bringing the world to your school!
This online educational resource offers a wealth of amazing virtual field trips that make distance and budgetary restraints a thing of the past, and today, we’re going to be guiding you through the best trips in their generous catalog.
Changemakers In Action introduces your class (grades 6–12) to revolutionary students around the world who are using the power of creativity to take action on the issues they care deeply about.
Encouraging young minds to be passionate and proactive, this trip is one of the most valuable experiences they’ll have in their school lives.
Learning how to navigate doubts regarding their voice and potential, they’ll figure out how to optimize their impact on the world around them and get the ball rolling on genuine change.
Similar in angle to Changemakers in Action, The Courage to Act is centered around the importance of making a stand against injustice in the world, thinking for ourselves, and working hard and collaboratively to forge a better future for all.
In a way, this virtual field trip is actually a fantastic precursor to the one detailed above, as it establishes the foundation for free thinking and subsequently, a desire to make a difference. Then, Changemakers in Action, teaches children how they can channel their energy to do so.
As such, we’d recommend treating them as companion field trips that should both be experienced in order to optimize student engagement and help them discover their righteously defiant voice.
Boeing is at the forefront of the aviation industry, utilizing highly skilled workforces, robotics, mechatronics, and ergonomics to push flight into the future, and in this field trip, your students are invited into three of the company’s most essential manufacturing facilities.
During the tour, children will witness STEM professionals using the latest and greatest technologies to solve the practical and scientific problems that humans face when we wish to defy gravity safely.
This is the kind of trip that can inspire a life-long curiosity and undoubtedly get those interested on the right track to pursue aerospace engineering as a career.
From the big wide world to the microcosms within us all, we arrive at Bringing SEL To Life, a virtual field trip dedicated to teaching young people about emotional intelligence, which is shockingly absent from most existing curriculums.
This field trip covers all the tools children need to enhance their sense of self and their awareness of their peers. Areas of focus include self-awareness, self-management, responsible decision-making, social awareness, relationship skills, and more.
In the absence of such intelligence, children often face inner turmoil as they grow older, leading to deteriorating mental health and a significantly lower quality of life.
However, this one field trip can change all that, charting them a course, not just to success, but happiness.
Much like the first two field trips covered, this and the previous one work well as a duo. Body Positivity by Amazing Me is, you’ve guessed it, all about body positivity and finding confidence and contentment in one’s self.
The primary goal of this virtual field trip is to prevent young people from looking at themselves through such a critical lens, and by extension, prevent them from looking at one another through a critical lens.
It’s fantastic for boosting self-esteem amongst your pupils, and the lessons imparted may even curtail bullying within the class.
Body Positivity is all about respect, for ourselves and those around us, and in this polarized contentious age, there’s little more important than that.
We’re willing to bet that a large portion of the children in your classes would do anything to land a spot on an NBA team and make a living playing the sport they love.
Unfortunately, there aren’t places for everyone out on the court, but this field trip reminds students that there are a bunch of other ways to get involved with their favorite sports and teams.
Taking you and your students on a tour of the NBA headquarters in Madison Square Garden, Careers That Count introduces the connection between math excellence and excellent basketball.
It’s a fantastic way to show that the line between academia and sports is often blurred in the professional sphere, thus creating a more inclusive culture in your class and in your school’s sporting ventures.
On this virtual field trip, your students will get up close and personal with one of nature’s most ferocious (and lovable) carnivores… the polar bear.
They’ll learn all about how these majestic creatures survive the extreme elements of the arctic tundra, and, more importantly, how human actions impact their frozen world.
It’s a highly engaging way of broaching the tricky and often quite scary subject of climate change, as well as establishing how all aspects of nature rely on balance to sustain themselves.
The opioid crisis in the US is worsening, and even though help seems to be on the way in the form of community support and overhauls in opioid addiction treatment, as it stands, our best weapon to defeat this tragedy is awareness.
In this three-part virtual field trip, students learn about the drugs that are tearing families and lives apart throughout America. They’ll hear stories from people who have or still are living with addiction and from those doing all they can to help slow the momentum of the crisis.
They’ll also learn about the science of opioids and how addiction works on a biological level, encouraging students never to risk using these damaging drugs, as well as removing the stigma that, bizarrely, still haunts addicts.
Presented as a means of weaning smokers off cigarettes, e-cigarettes were a promising revelation when first released, but now, they’re the most common tobacco-based product among American youths.
As these electronic smoking devices have simply replaced cigarettes rather than ousted smoking altogether, they’ve become the problem, and if anything, they’re even more enticing to kids than actual cigarettes.
This field trip strips away the veneer of acceptability from e-cigarettes and shows young people the ugly truth of tobacco addiction and the effect it can have on their developing minds.
Here, the American Heart Association (AHA) and the National Football League (NFL) have formed an unlikely alliance to teach children about the importance of being active and staying healthy.
Your students will learn about the cardio and strength exercises actual NFL stars use to stay healthy and on top of their game, as well as the science behind the exercises.
This field trip is all about spreading the joy of getting active and how fun and easy it is to get moving and burn off some energy.
STEM is fantastic and all, but it’s not the only educational acronym the youth of America should know about. STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts, and math), breaks down the division between the sciences and the arts.
On this virtual field trip, the modern intersections between art and science are explored via country music’s most celebrated award ceremony.
Students will learn that music is only one part of the action, and in fact, without all the technology, timing, production, and post-production, the event would be impossible to pull off.
Just as the NBA virtual field trip teaches children that they can have an impact on the court without actually being on the team, this field trip shows children that they can have an impact on music and events without actually being in a band.
In other words, it shines a light on all the hidden career paths available to those who love both the sciences and the arts, showing them they don’t have to compromise when it comes to a career — There’s something out there perfect for them!
Cooperative Minds introduces children to the agricultural co-op business model responsible for feeding the nation, a structure defined by its many professional intersections.
This field trip highlights the diverse careers that make such business models possible, and how collaboration is the only way to move into the future.
Final Thoughts
Discovery Education is doing great work alongside all the amazing contributors to create content that inspires, educates, and guides young people from all walks of life to the path that best suits them and best realizes their dreams.
Treat your classes to one of these wonderful field trips, and you won’t only be expanding minds, but completely changing lives, which is what teaching is all about!
Hi, my name is Helena Waters and I was a teacher for 40 years before retiring last year.
During my time as a teacher I dedicated the majority of it to making classrooms as fun as possible, with educational parties, fun activities, and low cost entertainment that made the children excited about learning.
I taught children of all ages, from preschoolers to high school students. Now, with the pandemic having uprooted everything that children once knew about school and learning, I think that the need for my ideas is bigger than ever.
That is why I created School Sparks, a place in which I can write down and share all of my ideas on how to get students excited about going to school again. I hope that you’ll find some useful within a school setting, even at home too!
