by Molly Porter
You might assume that jaded college students are beyond the days of field trips, but think again! UW’s campus is full of ample opportunities for engagement beyond the classroom. Consider getting your students to learn more immersively with:
- The Indigenous Walking Tour: This beautifully-narrated, student-created tour has so many great resources for understanding the environmental, political, and rhetorical histories of what is now UW campus. You might visit stops as a class if convenient,. or have students go and reflect on their own/ in pairs.
- Before I even knew about this tour, I enjoyed taking students to the Medicinal Herb Garden, Stop 5 on the tour. It’s a great place for students to sit and practice observation/ description, which worked well for my nature study journals.
- wǝɫǝbʔaltxʷ, or the Intellectual House, stop 2 on the tour, has staff happy to talk to students about the space and Coast Salish history if you call and give them a heads up! I’ve learned a lot from them both on my own and with a planned student group.
- One nugget of indigenous history I’ll add here (that is not on the tour) is the Denny Hall Clock! Still running from 1904, this mysterious artifact features an old photograph of Kikisoblu/ Princess Angeline, Chief Seattle’s daughter—perhaps an opportunity to think about kairos?
- The tour booklet is also a very cool multimodal composition in and of itself, and I’ve enjoyed discussing its use of tense and person with students.
- The Brockman Memorial Tree Tour: especially for place-based or environmental classes, this website serves as a guide to learn more about the trees in our evergreen state!
- This can be an independent resource OR you can schedule a tour for your class here!
- You might use this as an opportunity to discuss indigenous vs invasive species, and the idea of “pure” or “natural” environments and the people who steward them—most trees at UW are not indigenous to our area! Is this good or bad?
- I’ve also enjoyed pairing this with Aimee Nezhukumatathil’s opening “Catalpa Tree” chapter from World of Wonders, which discusses campus trees and racial identity.
- Side note: my favorite tree on the tour is the strange Monkey Puzzle in front of Denny!
- UW Libraries
- Special Collections: Schedule an appointment for your class to see rare books and learn about print culture history. You can contact them here to set up a time to visit their classroom!
- This can work especially well for 111 classes, where you can look at special editions of classic and obscure works of literature you may be studying, like a signed first edition of The Little Prince!
- But it also works for talking about multimodality in 182, 131 and beyond ! There’s a 19th century animal book that actually makes barnyard noises somehow!! They’ve also shown my students some really cool pop-up books and even a literal pillow-book (pages sown into a pillow).
- Their current exhibit on Invisible Cities until March 2022 could be a good resource for place-based/ urban environment classes.
- Special Collections: Schedule an appointment for your class to see rare books and learn about print culture history. You can contact them here to set up a time to visit their classroom!
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- Scavenger hunt in Suzzallo: when working on research projects, get students to find certain books in the library (or thinkers/ disciplines on the façade) for a prize!
- This can be a nice way to analyze the university (what was valued in 1922/ vs now?) and teach research skills beyond Google. Here’s more info about designing a critically-engaging scavenger hunt.
- Within Allen, you might think about western vs indigenous way of knowing with the installation Raven Brings Light to this House of Stories. This raven installation is perched above an exhibition which students could also take a look at—right now on the Vietnam War.
- Scavenger hunt in Suzzallo: when working on research projects, get students to find certain books in the library (or thinkers/ disciplines on the façade) for a prize!
- The Burke Museum: free to all students, WA’s oldest museum features immersive archaeological and paleontology, including literal windows in to the musum preservation process.
- I’ve had some of my students come here for the research phase of nature study writing projects in my place-based writing class.
- Students were particularly tickled by the giant ground sloth discovered at Seatac!
- Some teachers have also found it useful to analyze the Burke museum as a text: how is it organized? What are the stakes? Who’s the audience? The speaker?
- I’ve had some of my students come here for the research phase of nature study writing projects in my place-based writing class.
- The Henry Museum: also free to all students, and the only museum devoted to contemporary art in our region! Here’s a link to current exhibitions.
- Students can analyze the multimodal/ visual arguments at play here and journal about the space.
- Also, the café in the basement has the cheapest coffee on campus!
- The Frye Museum is another great free art museum I’ve taken students to for a summer class, but that’s a bit trickier in a 2-hour time block.
- You may consider getting students to independently write “scene” observations or rhetorical analyses for signs around UDistrict and other neighborhoods. Where do they find rhetorical appeals in their daily walks? How can they practice analysis and community engagement in attending performances on/ off campus?
Thanks for listening to me nerd out! What field trip ideas do y’all have to share?