Bringing the wider world into your school

These days, schools open their doors to all sorts of wonderful and exciting visitors – authors, illustrators, All Blacks, singers and emergency workers to name but a few. And it can be a lot more simple – and economical – than taking students out on a trip.

The educational benefits of school visits are plentiful, and can also create a sense of shared experience for students to remember. The students are in their familiar environment which, for younger children especially, can help them adhere to expected standards of behaviour and concentration, and teachers can focus their attention on creating opportunities for learning around the visit.

Excursions have their place, but require planning, coordination and contingencies that preclude them from happening too often. Hosting in-school visits, however, can allow teachers to avoid the inevitable stress of excursions without sacrificing learning outcomes.

Interestingly, educators can get more out of an incursion by choreographing the event themselves. “It’s much harder to take kids out and get an experience,” says Kerrie Kirwan, a primary teacher in Queensland, Australia. “If you bring someone in, you actually have the resource right there and you’re not at the whim of the place you’re visiting. You can tailor it to your needs.”

Ms Kirwan recalled a visit from an Indigenous educator, Lyndon Davis, who worked with all years in completely different ways. Her students were studying My Place, a piece of curriculum material that explored a place a child called home, but at different times through history. “With Lyndon, they talked about this place (their school) and what it was like before white people arrived.” With the younger students, he conducted a dance workshop in their own environment. “So in this way, it also represents value for money.”

Humans have always learnt best by doing and emulating, and while education has changed, we haven’t so much. As Benjamin Franklin famously said: “Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn.”

In-school visits can tie into the curriculum of any subject be it science, history, geometry or performing arts. Types of visits can include for example, a paleontologist excavating your school, a theatre workshop, African drumming or a cooking workshop. The possibilities are endless, and all add to the real life context of your curriculum, brightening up your school for the day.