Learning Beyond the Classroom
When students are given opportunities to walk in the woods, cultivate plants on a farm, jump in leaves, canoe down rivers, and sleep in tents, they understand, from an early age, that learning happens everywhere. Exploring the natural world is a critical part of an NGFS education and not only because it enhances our academic work. There are inherent challenges outdoors, and it is not always predictable; these experiences build resiliency, adaptability, collaborative skills, and memories.
At NGFS, we believe that all students need time to play and recharge. Daily outdoor breaks are part of the schedule for Preschool-12th grade. We know the importance of giving children space to create, negotiate, pretend, and engage in imaginative play.
Since our early beginnings, NGFS has been committed to the adventure, joy, and learning that travel can bring. Our students are challenged to get outside, get involved, and get moving. We take day trips, camping trips, city trips, and international trips. We immerse our students in new places and situations and delight as they discover, collaborate, question, hypothesize, and problem solve in ways they never could in class.
Class trips at NGFS are no ordinary field trips. Beginning in third grade, students take fall and spring overnight trips that immerse them in a world outside their comfort zones. Children are challenged to apply life skills in a variety of situations: learning how to set up a tent, camping in the woods, rock climbing, hiking, comforting a homesick classmate, navigating a ropes course, and most of all, how to interact with their teachers and peers in a new and challenging environment. It is through these experiences that students become aware of their obligations as responsible local and global citizens.
From tubing in the Ichetucknee Spring to civil rights history brought to life in Birmingham; from viewing a Shakespearean play to spending the night in the Tennessee Aquarium; from expanding on the study of elections in Washington, D.C to standing at the Ohio River enslaved people had to cross to freedom, the trips are as varied as the curriculum they enhance. It is through this experiential learning that students are able to feel, touch, and have real first-hand connections with what they’ve learned about and read.
Students go on class trips each year until graduation and hail these trips as hallmarks of their NGFS experience. Alumni remark that they were “life-changing”. New Garden’s trip program is truly one of a kind.