Field trips are central to the LREI experience. Those of you who have been with us for many years already know this well. Children begin taking trips early on - first to other parts of our own school building, then the block, the neighborhood, other neighborhoods, and eventually overnight to the farm. Elisabeth Irwin believed strongly in the value of taking students out into the world, as part and parcel of teaching about social injustices (visiting a coal mine) and as a way to acknowledge children as whole people, not just vessels to be filled with “schooling”. She also spoke and wrote, as John Dewey did, about the mandate for school to be an authentic and whole experience of life rather than something that that precedes it.

We are so excited to be able to re-integrate meaningful field trips into the program as institutions around us begin to open. In the last two weeks, our fifth graders and eighth graders were each the first school groups to be allowed to tour the Guggenheim and sit in the audience at the Joyce Theater. Some details and photos of each trip is below and there will be more to come!