Students of Nashoba Regional High School are ecstatic to be attending more field trips than usual, but the teachers are not sharing in their excitement. Whether it be an out of state trip, or an in school field trip, teachers feel that they are missing valuable class time with their students this 2015-2016 school year.

There has been a rise in the number of field trips that Nashoba has offered to students during the school year. Mr.Weiss, a science teacher of Nashoba, believes that the field trips are “getting out of hand” this year. Normally there the annual DECA trips but this year there has been an additional amount of such events.  

This year alone, there have been three DECA trips, an AP Government trip, a junior honors English trip, an in school field trip for the honors freshman English class, a Justice and Law trip, a sophomore English trip, a Baseball in History trip, and a Malawi trip. This is excluding the Latin field trip that was cancelled due to lack of interest by the students. While these field trips are exciting for the students, it causes chaos in the classroom. One field trip that has caused a particularly large amount of unrest among teachers is the freshman in school field trip on Shakespeare, run by Mr. Burks and Ms.Foley.

While some may see this Shakespeare field trip as frivolous, Mr.Burks wants to make it “more of an extravaganza” next year. He is also working on revamping the project to make the process “more efficient.”. His students worked incredibly hard on their scenes, and while there is certainly a field trip overload, each field trip is as important to the next one.This trip was not all fun and games. The honors freshman English students are required to read Romeo and Juliet, annotate it, and transform it into a stage production. The day of the trip, each class strolls down to the school auditorium, and each small group is filmed as they perform. One of the main issues with this trip is that it not only takes away all honors English freshman from their regular classes, but the acting classes also miss out on class time as they are invited to watch and critique the acting.
The question is, are ALL of these field trips necessary? Valuable class time in other subjects can be lost when classes leave for field trips, but how can we avoid it? Share your thoughts with your teachers and start the discussion!