Students explore the world of books
On Tuesday, January 23rd, Honors English 10 took a field trip to Barnes and Noble in Woodmere. For those of you who may not know, Barnes and Noble is a large bookstore that also contains magazines, puzzles, games, movies, CDs and it even has its own Starbucks inside. On this field trip, students got the opportunity to discuss literature and get the opportunity to pick out a self select book.
Along with the students, there were two teachers, Melissa Lindley and Karen Baker, who accompanied them on the field trip. English teacher ,Karen Baker, was the one who came up with the idea to take this field trip.
“I think that our expectation was for students to be exposed to all different genres and new literature. We wanted to open them up to a variety of books. Every student walked out with a book and they even surprised themselves with the books they bought. It was definitely time well spent.”
Baker set up this field trip in hopes of broadening student’s horizons when it comes to literature. When conversing with English Teacher Melissa Lindley she said, “One of the greatest joys was watching students discuss literature and recommend books to one another.”
For a teacher, being able to observe your students discussing the subject and genuinely caring about it, makes it all worthwhile.
When speaking to one of the senior journalism students, Jim Holt, he gave some insight on what they all got to experience on the field trip, “We started off with a tour of the store and then we all split up. It was pretty cool because I got to get Starbucks and I got a book called Ready Player One.”
When the students arrived, they got a detailed tour of the store which included a walk through of all the aisles. After the tour, students were given the opportunity to explore on their own and pick out their own book. While this is a great learning opportunity, how do the students feel about it and what did they take away from this trip?
When asking Sophomore Alyssa Viant how she felt about the field trip she said, “I didn’t like the extent of the tour because it was really thorough to the point where it got boring, but I did like exploring all the different genres of books that they had available. My favorite part was getting to explore all the books I’m interested in. I ended up buying Speak by Laurie Halse-Anderson.”
Also Sophomore Caroline Eggett states, “I liked knowing all the sections that barnes and nobles has and I liked learning where certain books were that were popular. I especially liked how they had the AP exam books.”
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Many people are not aware of how wide of a variety Barnes and Nobles has. Even if someone may not be an avid reader, they are able to buy ACT/ SAT prep books and AP books which, at some point, they will need.
After talking to a handful of the students, they all had something in common. They all enjoyed the fact that they had the freedom to pick out something that they liked.
As Sophomore Rachel Dudziak says, “I liked being able to choose any book that I wanted.”
In high school, students are required to read specific books which, unfortunately, limits their options and genres of different books. When students are told what to read, it can cause them to have negative feelings towards books because they just have not had the opportunity to explore what genre best suits them.
On this field trip, students were not told what they had to buy or read. They were given the freedom to explore their own interests whether that be reading, music, test preparation,etc. In turn, this could lead to students finding a genre or author that they like thus, continuing to read.
Overall, the students seemed to enjoy themselves on this excursion and so did the teachers. The students got the opportunity to choose a book that they were interested in and the teachers got the chance to watch their students invest in educational conversation on their own terms.
