Perspective | From the apple farm to the Big Apple: Reflecting on field trip experiences for public school students
The first time I rode on a yellow school bus, I was 3 years old and wore a pink tutu. My preschool class came to R-S Central High School, the high school I would one day attend, to visit its farm.
I stood in front of the door to the bus and was terrified — that bus was so big! We all climbed on, buckled up, and drove across campus to explore cows, pigs, and even a llama. I have never forgotten that trip.
Two years later, my kindergarten class took a field trip to an apple farm in neighboring Henderson County. This time, when we lined up for the bus, I wasn’t scared because I had already done this before. I hadn’t, however, been to an apple farm.
We picked, tasted, and peeled apples; got lost in a corn maze; and learned about the history of apple farming in western North Carolina. At 5, I was probably more interested in the caramel apples than the history part.
Those early field trips taught me things I wouldn’t understand until much later: Some things in life make more sense when you get out of the classroom and experience them first hand.
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Four years later, I was in the fifth grade and the world shut down.
During COVID, my mom tried to give my twin sister and me experiences however she could. We watched YouTube videos about faraway places, learned how to sew, learned to cook and make homemade pasta, and took nature walks and stumbled upon a newborn deer. I even caught a baby snake that freaked everyone out! From our couch, we watched the release of “Hamilton” at least 20 times, and I fell in love with musical theater.
For a while, our window into the world was limited to a screen and our literal backyard.
When schools finally reopened, I was a middle schooler. Learning happened through masks, six feet apart, and on an iPad. I was happy to be back in school, but a lot of the new learning felt disconnected from the real world.
By high school, opportunities to explore returned.
Through the Rutherford County Schools Robert and Janice McNair Educational Foundation, students in my district are able to visit colleges, businesses, and organizations to see possibilities after graduation.
These and some other experiences through student council and sports helped me discover something else: I liked leading. Leadership retreats, community organizations, the Rutherfordton Citizens Academy, and being a Governor’s Page for Gov. Josh Stein, all taught me about opportunities outside my community, but also about the people and possibilities right here at home.
Each experience that these opportunities and the people who led them showed me revealed another piece of what my future could look like.
Eventually, though, I began asking different questions: What do I really like? How can I learn more about those things? Are there actually opportunities for me to experience them?
I have always loved fashion and beauty, and I have developed a skill for storytelling and social media, so I started imagining a career that somehow combined those interests. But there wasn’t a field trip for these interests. At least not here.
At age 3, adults put me on a bus and chose where I needed to go to learn something new. At 17, I realized I needed to choose the destination and the learning experience myself.
I remembered seeing an Instagram post from someone I knew who had attended a summer fashion program at LIM College in New York City. I started researching and discovered the program offered classes in marketing, styling, and design. I applied, got accepted, and then broke it to my parents that we needed to figure out how to get me there.
New York is expensive, and while the program itself was affordable for us, travel and lodging could have put the experience out of reach. Because my mom had lived in New York after college, she had friends who offered us a place to stay. I know not every student has that kind of connection, and I didn’t take it for granted. This was going to be a stretch for my family, but we knew it would help me understand my future and how to plan for it.
I arrived in New York knowing I loved fashion. I came home knowing much more.
Through my classes, I discovered that the part of the fashion industry that excites me most is merchandising, branding, and marketing. I began looking at colleges differently that week, too. Now, as I prepare to graduate from high school, my goal is to go to UNC-Chapel Hill to study journalism and marketing, eventually using both in a fashion-related industry.
LIM wasn’t simply a summer program. It became the field trip I needed at 17, and it was one I had to find for myself.
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On this trip, there wasn’t a yellow school bus waiting for me. Each morning and evening, I navigated the subway for an hour between Brooklyn and Manhattan to get to and from classes. This was a long way from the 3 year old who was once terrified to ride a bus across her future high school campus!
As a bonus, while I was in New York, I finally saw “Hamilton” live on Broadway — twice! Years earlier, during COVID, I had watched it over and over from my couch when a screen was my window to the world. Now, I was in the theater — the actual “room where it happens!”
Field trips matter for students. In a time where funding public education is declining, there has never been a more important time to invest in students and their experiences. My first field trips taught me to see things around me. This last one taught me to see things in myself.
I never imagined that a trip to an apple farm would someday lead me to the Big Apple, or that exploring possibilities outside my rural community would bring me home with a clearer sense of purpose. Maybe that is exactly what these experiences are supposed to do.
Every time students experience a world beyond the one they already know — whether it is across campus, across the county, or hundreds of miles from home — the world of possibilities becomes much bigger. Sometimes, all it takes is being courageous enough to step on a bus and ready to explore.