School is out for the summer, and most of us are now thinking about vacations, gardening, honey-do lists, baseball games and cookouts. And that is all great!But as we grow older we realize that summer flies by faster every year. Fall and the start of school will be here soon and savvy parents and teachers know they must use this time for planning.
How to bolster classroom learning and enrich the educational experience of students is a question with which many of us wrestle. Granted, there are many exciting teachers at work in our schools, but even with the best teachers, the grind of the everyday school week can becoming endlessly boring for kids. External stimulation is essential for keeping their minds actively engaged in learning.
Field trips are a great way to provide enrichment experiences for schools. Visiting museums or the zoo, or a trip to a local historical site or planetarium all provide opportunities to not only break the monotony of the school week but also to allow exciting teachable moments. But not all schools are close enough to interesting locations for this to be feasible. Moreover, transportation costs, permission slips and other logistical variables often rule out field trips altogether. A perfect substitute may be found in the introduction of similar experiences brought to the school by way of traveling performers.
Instead of a field trip to a planetarium, have a portable planetarium visit your school. Instead of going to a local battlefield have a historical re-enactor visit your school as, say, Ben Franklin or Abraham Lincoln. Rather than a trip to a science museum set up instead a visit by a science assembly that brings in a show followed by hands on experiments and workshops. Many possibilities for school enrichment exist.Understandably, many parents, looking for school enrichment, are tempted to arrange a visit from an author of children’s literature. But visits from authors of books for children are often extremely expensive, and not all authors are commanding or interesting speakers. A good alternative is to schedule a school assembly like Young Authors Day, where an exciting and funny professional performer will present performances of stories the children write themselves.
All in all, there are many ways to provide enrichment programs to schools that will bolster and gild the educational experience. But summer is the time to plan for these events, as the best enrichment programs, either for during the school day or for after school, will have their calendars filled quickly. Be smart and make your plans now. And then go and have that cookout or see that ball game. There is still a lot of summer left!
Geoff Beauchamp is the Regional Manager of Mobile Ed Productions where "Education Through Entertainment" has been the guiding principal since 1979. Mobile Ed Productions produces and markets quality educational school assembly programs in the fields of science, history, writing, astronomy, natural science, mathematics, character issues and a variety of other curriculum based areas. In addition, Mr. Beauchamp is a professional actor with 30 years of experience in film, television and on stage. He created and still performs occasionally in Mobile Ed's THE LIVING LINCOLN
