Body Worlds Field Trip
Introduction
One of my primary goals as an educator is to provide as many real-world opportunities as possible that can open doors for students during their time in my classroom and beyond. I attempt to link every lesson and every activity to a real-world concept. Students should feel like and know that what they are learning inside the classroom has a link to their lives outside of the classroom walls. However, there is a limit to the experiences that we, as educators, can provide for our students from within our schools. Sometimes, giving access to outside opportunities for learning can significantly deepen students’ understanding of concepts and expose them to a breadth of information, people, programs, and resources that would not be able to be covered in class. One such access opportunity I was able to provide for my students, who in turn were able to share with their families, was a field trip to the traveling museum exhibit, Body Worlds Pulse. The following opportunity is one of the single most educational and door-opening days I was able to provide for my students in Los Angeles. Below you will find the learning, trip preparation and family communications conducted in class as well as evidence from the field trip and post-trip student reflections that show this opportunity opened doors for students by exposing them to our classroom concepts in a real-world setting and providing them with tools necessary to access and navigate this opportunity.
Identifying the Need
Teaching in the School of Medical Science, Arts and Technology (the SMART Academy), every lesson was required to relate, in some way, to the field of medicine. Furthermore, each semester students engaged in a project-based learning (PBL) experience where they were required to synthesize knowledge from multiple of their core classes as well as advisory to research a real-world problem. However, while this is a great concept in theory, actually bringing in resources that could be used by students to deepen their learning presented a problem. The science department at Manual Arts has minimal funding. Any time I wanted to provide a laboratory experience for my students I needed to acquire and purchase the materials on my own. While this was possible for many simple chemistry related labs, it was not possible to procure materials required to gain a deeper understanding of body systems, higher-level chemistry concepts, and medical advancements. When these topics were being covered, I typically resorted to videos and online resources. However, while videos and pictures can be useful for learning, they cannot provide the same depth as an in-person or hands-on experience. For this reason, I began to research opportunities to give a more immersive learning experience for my students.
When I began my research, I started by searching for museums, companies, or laboratories around Los Angeles that could be accessible for a field trip to deepen my students learning in regards to anatomy and medical advancements. There were several museums, university science labs, and companies that could potentially work for a field trip opportunity that seemed to fit my desired criteria. However, many of these opportunities were fairly regionally obvious because they are always present and available in Los Angeles. When I stumbled across an announcement stating that the traveling exhibit Body Worlds Pulse would be coming to the California Science Center, I knew that I had found the perfect opportunity for my students. This exhibit was a limited engagement that would not stay in Los Angeles long.
I assumed that the California Science Center (CSC)—which is located in Los Angeles and close to my school—would be readily accessible to my students. However, many of my students said that they had never been. Many stated that they have never even considered going because it was "so far away." Furthermore, while admission to the main building of the CSC is free—there is an admission fee to enter any special or traveling exhibits. Being that Manual Arts is located in a low-income community—this admission fee would act as a barrier of access for my students and their families and would cause this resource not to be readily available even though the exhibit would be in our home city. I approached my principal to discuss potential funding options for this field trip and, to my surprise, she said there were enough funds left over in the budget from the previous school year to fund the entire trip for my advisory class. With the trip receiving a green light from my administration, I began planning how to present the opportunity to my students.
In-Class Preparation Lesson
When I booked the field trip with the California Science Center, the museum provided me with a teacher’s guide that outlined the various aspects of the exhibit and gave several materials that could be used in class to prepare students. They also provided an extra admission ticket so I could go to the exhibition early to see the setup and plan for the field trip. After visiting the exhibit, reading through the teacher's guide, and considering the specific needs and learning styles of the students in my advisory, I planned the lesson shown in the plan in the document to the left.
Lesson plan for in-class field trip preparation
While Body Worlds provided me with some resources and materials that could be used in the classroom to prepare students for this door-opening activity, the documents were lengthy and dense. Knowing the specific group of students that were going on the field trip, the official Body Worlds information packets needed to be reformatted before they could be implemented in my classroom. I divided the main concepts of the student guide and the primary body systems displayed in the exhibit into seven different stations at the tables around my room. Students were instructed to work with one of their table partners as they worked through each of the stations. An extra laptop was also provided at each station to allow students to search for more information or to help clarify and deepen their understanding of concepts when necessary. The stations were divided as follows (with page numbers corresponding to the document on the left):
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Station 1: Skeletal—p. 1 – 2
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Station 2: Muscular—p. 1 – 2
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Station 3: Nervous—p. 3 – 4
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Station 4: Respiratory—p. 5 – 6
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Station 5: Cardiovascular—p. 7 – 8
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Station 6: Digestive/Excretory—p. 9 – 10
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Station 7: Reproductive/Fetal—p. 11 – 12
Materials for stations activity
Students were provided an electronic copy of the modified student worksheet shown in the document on the left. I borrowed a laptop cart from the English department to be used during this station activity to allow students to fill out this document. At the end of the station activity, students emailed me their filled out worksheets, which I graded for completion and then printed. Students took these worksheets with them to the exhibit to check their answers.
Student samples of stations worksheet
Parent and Guardian Communication
While I was excited to help provide this experience to my advisory students, they were not the only ones who could potentially benefit from this access opportunity. To fully round out an impactful and authentic access opportunity, it should not only impact your students but should also expose their families to the people, programs, resources, and connections that can open doors for students and their entire families. The flyer on the left was designed to inform students’ siblings, family members, and guardians about our field trip and to allow students the opportunity to share what they are learning in school with those in their lives outside of school. Students seemed excited to be able to share this experience with the people in their lives. Since many of my students’ families and guardians do not speak English, a Spanish and an English version of the flyer were sent home so all families and guardians would be included. By sharing this knowledge and experience with individuals in their home lives, students were able to spread the resources and information about events happening in our community and enable others, outside our classroom, to potentially navigate this opportunity.
Student sample of stations worksheet
Pictures from the Field Trip
Below you will find several pictures of my students being exposed to the program and resources at the California Science Center and navigating this opportunity during the field trip to Body Worlds at the California Science Center.
Students looking at a man holding his organs above his head
Student practicing CPR inside the exhibit
Students looking at a display of male wrestelres
Students looking at football player display
Chaperones viewing a display
Students writing on a "Before I die I want to…" wall in the reflection room at the end of the exhibit
Display that welcomes visitors to Body Worlds Pulse
Student Survey and Reflection
I have found that reflection is one of the single most powerful tools an educator can use to ensure our students are learning and retaining knowledge to which they are exposed. On the way back to Manual Arts from the California Science Center students were given a reflection survey to fill out. They were given the option to fill out a paper copy, or they could submit a Survey Monkey on their phones. Students' responses to the survey are shown in the document on the left.
Student survey responses
Teacher Reflection
This field trip was, by far, the best day I have ever had as an educator. I had never seen students more engaged and excited to learn as they were in the exhibit. Students were constantly running up to me and asking questions about the various parts of the displays. There were also several times when a student ran over to me, clearly very excited, grabbed my arm and physically dragged me to one of the displays they were freaking out over. We were constantly Googling additional facts to learn more about what was said on the exhibit information plaques. This field trip, coincidentally, landed on my birthday. At the end of the day, my students surprised me with a cake—baked by one of their mothers—to wish me a happy birthday and to say thank you for organizing the visit to the museum. Body Worlds—in particular, the process of plastination—spawned several inside jokes between my advisory students that persisted for the rest of the school year.
While it is easy to remember this day and field trip as being incredibly fun, it was also arguably the single most educational day and door-opening day I was able to provide for my students in Los Angeles. Students were able to navigate and access an opportunity that provided them with a comprehensive overview of all of the body's major systems in a single day. Furthermore, the way the information was displayed was engaging in a way that made it significantly easier to remember in the long term. This outside opportunity provided a level of learning that simply could not have been achieved within my classroom walls and exposed students to different real-world paths they could take beyond my classroom to apply their classroom learning. This opportunity not only opened doors for my students but also their families by providing them with the tools necessary to navigate and access the information presented by the people, programs, resources, and connections of the California Science Center and the traveling Body Worlds Pulse exhibit. While it is unfortunate that this exhibit was only in Los Angeles for such a short period of time, and it cannot become an annual outing for Manual, I hope that another classroom somewhere else in America—or around the world—is having as positive of an experience as my class and I had last October.