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How to Write the “Overcoming Challenges” Essay + Examples

What’s covered:.

• What is the Overcoming Challenges Essay?
• Real Overcoming Challenges Essay Prompts
• How to Choose a Topic
• Writing Tips

Overcoming Challenges Essay Examples

• Where to Get Your Essay Edited

While any college essay can be intimidating, the Overcoming Challenges prompt often worries students the most. Those students who’ve been lucky enough not to experience trauma tend to assume they have nothing worth saying. On the other hand, students who’ve overcome larger obstacles may be hesitant to talk about them.

Regardless of your particular circumstances, there are steps you can take to make the essay writing process simpler. Here are our top tips for writing the overcoming challenges essay successfully.

What is the “Overcoming Challenges” Essay?

The overcoming challenges prompt shows up frequently in both main application essays (like the Common App) and supplemental essays. Because supplemental essays allow students to provide schools with additional information, applicants should be sure that the subject matter they choose to write about differs from what’s in their main essay.

Students often assume the overcoming challenges essay requires them to detail past traumas. While you can certainly write about an experience that’s had a profound effect on your life, it’s important to remember that colleges aren’t evaluating students based on the seriousness of the obstacle they overcame.

On the contrary, the goal of this essay is to show admissions officers that you have the intelligence and fortitude to handle any challenges that come your way. After all, college serves as an introduction to adult life, and schools want to know that the students they admit are up to the task. 

Real “Overcoming Challenges” Essay Prompts

To help you understand what the “Overcoming Challenges” essay looks like, here are a couple sample prompts.

Currently, the Common Application asks students to answer the following prompt in 650 words or less:

“The lessons we take from obstacles we encounter can be fundamental to later success. Recount a time when you faced a challenge, setback, or failure. How did it affect you, and what did you learn from the experience?”

For the past several years, MIT has prompted students to write 200 to 250 words on the following:

“Tell us about the most significant challenge you’ve faced or something important that didn’t go according to plan. How did you manage the situation?”

In both cases, the prompts explicitly ask for your response to the challenge. The event itself isn’t as important as how it pushed you to grow.

How to Choose a Topic for an Essay on Overcoming Challenges

When it comes to finding the best topic for your overcoming challenges essays, there’s no right answer. The word “challenge” is ambiguous and could be used to reference a wide range of situations from prevailing over a bully to getting over your lifelong stage fright to appear in a school musical. Here are some suggestions to keep in mind when selecting an essay subject.

1. Avoid trivial or common topics

While there aren’t many hard-and-fast rules for choosing an essay topic, students should avoid overdone topics.

These include:

• Working hard in a challenging class
• Overcoming a sports injury
• Moving schools or immigrating to the US
• Tragedy (divorce, death, abuse)

Admissions officers have read numerous essays on the subject, so it’s harder for you to stand out (see our full list of cliché college essay topics to avoid ). If events like these were truly formative to you, you can still choose to write about them, but you’ll need to be as personal as possible. 

It’s also ideal if you have a less traditional storyline for a cliché topic; for example, if your sports injury led you to discover a new passion, that would be a more unique story than detailing how you overcame your injury and got back in the game.

Similarly, students may not want to write about an obstacle that admissions committees could perceive as low stakes, such as getting a B on a test, or getting into a small fight with a friend. The goal of this essay is to illustrate how you respond to adversity, so the topic you pick should’ve been at least impactful on your personal growth.

2. Pick challenges that demonstrate qualities you want to highlight

Students often mistakenly assume they need to have experienced exceptional circumstances like poverty, an abusive parent, or cancer to write a good essay. The truth is that the best topics will allow you to highlight specific personal qualities and share more about who you are. The essay should be less about the challenge itself, and more about how you responded to it.

Ask yourself what personality traits you want to emphasize, and see what’s missing in your application. Maybe you want to highlight your adaptability, for example, but that isn’t clearly expressed in your application. In this case, you might write about a challenge that put your adaptability to the test, or shaped you to become more adaptable.

Here are some examples of good topics we’ve seen over the years:

• Not having a coach for a sports team and becoming one yourself
• Helping a parent through a serious health issue
• Trying to get the school track dedicated to a coach
• Having to switch your Model UN position last-minute

Tips for Writing an Essay About Overcoming Challenges

Once you’ve selected a topic for your essays, it’s time to sit down and write. For best results, make sure your essay focuses on your efforts to tackle an obstacle rather than the problem itself. Additionally, you could avoid essay writing pitfalls by doing the following:

1. Choose an original essay structure

If you want your overcoming challenges essay to attract attention, aim to break away from more traditional structures. Most of these essays start by describing an unsuccessful attempt at a goal and then explain the steps the writer took to master the challenge. 

You can stand out by choosing a challenge you’re still working on overcoming, or focus on a mental or emotional challenge that spans multiple activities or events. For example, you might discuss your fear of public speaking and how that impacted your ability to coach your brother’s Little League team and run for Student Council. 

You can also choose a challenge that can be narrated in the moment, such as being put on the spot to teach a yoga class. These challenges can make particularly engaging essays, as you get to experience the writer’s thoughts and emotions as they unfold.

Keep in mind that you don’t necessarily need to have succeeded in your goal for this essay. Maybe you ran for an election and lost, or maybe you proposed a measure to the school board that wasn’t passed. It’s still possible to write a strong essay about topics like these as long as you focus on your personal growth. In fact, these may make for even stronger essays since they are more unconventional topics.

2. Focus on the internal

When writing about past experiences, you may be tempted to spend too much time describing specific people and events. With an Overcoming Challenges essay though, the goal is to focus on your thoughts and feelings.

For example, rather than detail all the steps you took to become a better public speaker, use the majority of your essay to describe your mental state as you embarked on the journey to achieving your goals. Were you excited, scared, anxious, or hopeful? Don’t be afraid to let the reader in on your innermost emotions and thoughts during this process.

3. Share what you learned 

An Overcoming Challenges essay should leave the reader with a clear understanding of what you learned on your journey, be it physical, mental, or emotional. There’s no need to explicitly say “this experience taught me X,” but your essay should at least implicitly share any lessons you learned. This can be done through your actions and in-the-moment reflections. Remember that the goal is to show admissions committees why your experiences make you a great candidate for admission. 

Was I no longer the beloved daughter of nature, whisperer of trees? Knee-high rubber boots, camouflage, bug spray—I wore the g arb and perfume of a proud wild woman, yet there I was, hunched over the pathetic pile of stubborn sticks, utterly stumped, on the verge of tears. As a child, I had considered myself a kind of rustic princess, a cradler of spiders and centipedes, who was serenaded by mourning doves and chickadees, who could glide through tick-infested meadows and emerge Lyme-free. I knew the cracks of the earth like the scars on my own rough palms. Yet here I was, ten years later, incapable of performing the most fundamental outdoor task: I could not, for the life of me, start a fire. 

Furiously I rubbed the twigs together—rubbed and rubbed until shreds of skin flaked from my fingers. No smoke. The twigs were too young, too sticky-green; I tossed them away with a shower of curses, and began tearing through the underbrush in search of a more flammable collection. My efforts were fruitless. Livid, I bit a rejected twig, determined to prove that the forest had spurned me, offering only young, wet bones that would never burn. But the wood cracked like carrots between my teeth—old, brittle, and bitter. Roaring and nursing my aching palms, I retreated to the tent, where I sulked and awaited the jeers of my family. 

Rattling their empty worm cans and reeking of fat fish, my brother and cousins swaggered into the campsite. Immediately, they noticed the minor stick massacre by the fire pit and called to me, their deep voices already sharp with contempt. 

“Where’s the fire, Princess Clara?” they taunted. “Having some trouble?” They prodded me with the ends of the chewed branches and, with a few effortless scrapes of wood on rock, sparked a red and roaring flame. My face burned long after I left the fire pit. The camp stank of salmon and shame. 

In the tent, I pondered my failure. Was I so dainty? Was I that incapable? I thought of my hands, how calloused and capable they had been, how tender and smooth they had become. It had been years since I’d kneaded mud between my fingers; instead of scaling a white pine, I’d practiced scales on my piano, my hands softening into those of a musician—fleshy and sensitive. And I’d gotten glasses, having grown horrifically nearsighted; long nights of dim lighting and thick books had done this. I couldn’t remember the last time I had lain down on a hill, barefaced, and seen the stars without having to squint. Crawling along the edge of the tent, a spider confirmed my transformation—he disgusted me, and I felt an overwhelming urge to squash him. 

Yet, I realized I hadn’t really changed—I had only shifted perspective. I still eagerly explored new worlds, but through poems and prose rather than pastures and puddles. I’d grown to prefer the boom of a bass over that of a bullfrog, learned to coax a different kind of fire from wood, having developed a burn for writing rhymes and scrawling hypotheses. 

That night, I stayed up late with my journal and wrote about the spider I had decided not to kill. I had tolerated him just barely, only shrieking when he jumped—it helped to watch him decorate the corners of the tent with his delicate webs, knowing that he couldn’t start fires, either. When the night grew cold and the embers died, my words still smoked—my hands burned from all that scrawling—and even when I fell asleep, the ideas kept sparking—I was on fire, always on fire.

This essay is an excellent example because the writer turns an everyday challenge—starting a fire—into an exploration of her identity. The writer was once “a kind of rustic princess, a cradler of spiders and centipedes,” but has since traded her love of the outdoors for a love of music, writing, and reading. 

The story begins in media res , or in the middle of the action, allowing readers to feel as if we’re there with the writer. One of the essay’s biggest strengths is its use of imagery. We can easily visualize the writer’s childhood and the present day. For instance, she states that she “rubbed and rubbed [the twigs] until shreds of skin flaked from my fingers.”

The writing has an extremely literary quality, particularly with its wordplay. The writer reappropriates words and meanings, and even appeals to the senses: “My face burned long after I left the fire pit. The camp stank of salmon and shame.” She later uses a parallelism to cleverly juxtapose her changed interests: “instead of scaling a white pine, I’d practiced scales on my piano.”

One of the essay’s main areas of improvement is its overemphasis on the “story” and lack of emphasis on the reflection. The second to last paragraph about changing perspective is crucial to the essay, as it ties the anecdote to larger lessons in the writer’s life. She states that she hasn’t changed, but has only shifted perspective. Yet, we don’t get a good sense of where this realization comes from and how it impacts her life going forward. 

The end of the essay offers a satisfying return to the fire imagery, and highlights the writer’s passion—the one thing that has remained constant in her life.

“Getting beat is one thing – it’s part of competing – but I want no part in losing.” Coach Rob Stark’s motto never fails to remind me of his encouragement on early-morning bus rides to track meets around the state. I’ve always appreciated the phrase, but an experience last June helped me understand its more profound, universal meaning.

Stark, as we affectionately call him, has coached track at my high school for 25 years. His care, dedication, and emphasis on developing good character has left an enduring impact on me and hundreds of other students. Not only did he help me discover my talent and love for running, but he also taught me the importance of commitment and discipline and to approach every endeavor with the passion and intensity that I bring to running. When I learned a neighboring high school had dedicated their track to a longtime coach, I felt that Stark deserved similar honors.

Our school district’s board of education indicated they would only dedicate our track to Stark if I could demonstrate that he was extraordinary. I took charge and mobilized my teammates to distribute petitions, reach out to alumni, and compile statistics on the many team and individual champions Stark had coached over the years. We received astounding support, collecting almost 3,000 signatures and pages of endorsements from across the community. With help from my teammates, I presented this evidence to the board.

They didn’t bite. 

Most members argued that dedicating the track was a low priority. Knowing that we had to act quickly to convince them of its importance, I called a team meeting where we drafted a rebuttal for the next board meeting. To my surprise, they chose me to deliver it. I was far from the best public speaker in the group, and I felt nervous about going before the unsympathetic board again. However, at that second meeting, I discovered that I enjoy articulating and arguing for something that I’m passionate about.

Public speaking resembles a cross country race. Walking to the starting line, you have to trust your training and quell your last minute doubts. When the gun fires, you can’t think too hard about anything; your performance has to be instinctual, natural, even relaxed. At the next board meeting, the podium was my starting line. As I walked up to it, familiar butterflies fluttered in my stomach. Instead of the track stretching out in front of me, I faced the vast audience of teachers, board members, and my teammates. I felt my adrenaline build, and reassured myself: I’ve put in the work, my argument is powerful and sound. As the board president told me to introduce myself, I heard, “runners set” in the back of my mind. She finished speaking, and Bang! The brief silence was the gunshot for me to begin. 

The next few minutes blurred together, but when the dust settled, I knew from the board members’ expressions and the audience’s thunderous approval that I had run quite a race. Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough; the board voted down our proposal. I was disappointed, but proud of myself, my team, and our collaboration off the track. We stood up for a cause we believed in, and I overcame my worries about being a leader. Although I discovered that changing the status quo through an elected body can be a painstakingly difficult process and requires perseverance, I learned that I enjoy the challenges this effort offers. Last month, one of the school board members joked that I had become a “regular” – I now often show up to meetings to advocate for a variety of causes, including better environmental practices in cafeterias and safer equipment for athletes.

Just as Stark taught me, I worked passionately to achieve my goal. I may have been beaten when I appealed to the board, but I certainly didn’t lose, and that would have made Stark proud.

While the writer didn’t succeed in getting the track dedicated to Coach Stark, their essay is certainly successful in showing their willingness to push themselves and take initiative.

The essay opens with a quote from Coach Stark that later comes full circle at the end of the essay. We learn about Stark’s impact and the motivation for trying to get the track dedicated to him.

One of the biggest areas of improvement in the intro, however, is how the essay tells us Stark’s impact rather than showing us: His care, dedication, and emphasis on developing good character has left an enduring impact on me and hundreds of other students. Not only did he help me discover my talent and love for running, but he also taught me the importance of commitment and discipline and to approach every endeavor with the passion and intensity that I bring to running.

The writer could’ve helped us feel a stronger emotional connection to Stark if they had included examples of Stark’s qualities, rather than explicitly stating them. For example, they could’ve written something like: Stark was the kind of person who would give you gas money if you told him your parents couldn’t afford to pick you up from practice. And he actually did that—several times. At track meets, alumni regularly would come talk to him and tell him how he’d changed their lives. Before Stark, I was ambivalent about running and was on the JV team, but his encouragement motivated me to run longer and harder and eventually make varsity. Because of him, I approach every endeavor with the passion and intensity that I bring to running.

The essay goes on to explain how the writer overcame their apprehension of public speaking, and likens the process of submitting an appeal to the school board to running a race. This metaphor makes the writing more engaging and allows us to feel the student’s emotions.

While the student didn’t ultimately succeed in getting the track dedicated, we learn about their resilience and initiative: I now often show up to meetings to advocate for a variety of causes, including better environmental practices in cafeterias and safer equipment for athletes.

Overall, this essay is well-done. It demonstrates growth despite failing to meet a goal, which is a unique essay structure. The running metaphor and full-circle intro/ending also elevate the writing in this essay.

Where to Get Your Overcoming Challenges Essay Edited

The Overcoming Challenges essay is one of the trickier supplemental prompts, so it’s important to get feedback on your drafts. That’s why we created our free Peer Essay Review tool , where you can get a free review of your essay from another student. You can also improve your own writing skills by reviewing other students’ essays. 

If you want a college admissions expert to review your essay, advisors on CollegeVine have helped students refine their writing and submit successful applications to top schools. Find the right advisor for you to improve your chances of getting into your dream school!

Related CollegeVine Blog Posts

The New York Times

The learning network | what memorable experiences have you had in learning science or math.

What Memorable Experiences Have You Had in Learning Science or Math?

Questions about issues in the news for students 13 and older.

• See all Student Opinion »

Update: Oct. 16: Winners have been announced! Thank you for participating!

What moments or concepts do you remember best from your education in science, technology, engineering or math, the so-called STEM subjects?

What high or low points come to mind when thinking about classes you’ve taken in school? What do you remember learning informally, outside of school, whether on your own or with friends or relatives?

A special back-to-school edition of the Science Times section is asking what works, and what doesn’t, in STEM education , and we are inviting students to help answer that question by reflecting on their own learning in these areas.

So, if you’re 13 to 19 years old, please tell us below about a memorable moment in your STEM education — whether in school or out of school, whether last week or 10 years ago — and what it taught you.

Note: This is a special edition of our daily Student Opinion question. Posting a comment here by 7 a.m. Eastern on Sept. 27 will enter you in a contest that we will judge in collaboration with The Times’s science desk, and make you eligible to have your writing featured elsewhere on NYTimes.com.

To help answer the question, you might ask yourself:

• What comes to mind when you think back over the best, or worst, moments in the science, technology, engineering or math classes you have taken since you were a child? What lessons, activities or assignments were especially memorable? Why?
• How have your experiences outside of school taught you about scientific, mathematical or technological concepts? For example, you might remember an exhibition at a science museum, or something you made or experimented with in an after-school club .
• Based on your experience, what advice would you give teachers of STEM subjects? Why?

So whether it was the time your third-grade teacher took you outside to see real-world parallel and perpendicular lines; the camping trip you went on with your Girl Scout troop where you learned, firsthand, about how poison ivy spreads; or the summer you spent at an explosives or coding camp, tell us in detail about one important experience and what it taught you — and what advice you might give teachers because of it.

We have a few basic rules for this contest:

• Please keep your responses to 350 words or fewer. ( Here is a word count tool .)
• Anyone who is 13 to 19 years old, from anywhere in the world, is eligible.
• As always for this blog, please omit your last name, but please include your age and hometown.
• Only one comment per student, please.

Teachers: We’ll leave this question open to comments indefinitely, and we invite you to bring all of your classes to answer it, but please remember that if you would like your students to be considered for publication, they must post their responses by Sept. 27. Update: To make it easier to keep track of your students’ submissions, we suggest giving them a class code of some kind to affix to their first names (“JackHCHS”).

Students 13 and older are invited to comment below. Please use only your first name . For privacy policy reasons, we will not publish student comments that include a last name.

Comments are no longer being accepted.

In middle school I came to understand an important distinction that has remained with me ever since. I was attending school in Santa Clara, CA. Arithmetic had been difficult for me through each successive grade. Now in middle school I was faced with algebra and even if I somehow was able to pass the course, an additional hurdle — geometry loomed to further humble me in my parents eyes. Mr. DeVeney taught introduction to algebra, using paperback textbook from SMSG (some math some garbage) was Mr. D’s description. To my complete surprise algebra was not arithmetic more advanced. Algebra was conceptual, imaginative, manipulating symbols. Algebra was mathematics, and I was a much better student of mathematics than I had ever been of arithmetic.

When I was in Grade Seven, I entered a mathematics league with my classmates. After grinding at the competition for one and a half hours, I finally managed to finish and enter my competition. I’ve always been good at math, so I figured I had it in the bag. Three weeks later when the results came, I found out I had 24/25 questions correctly answered. I was ecstatic! I crowed over it to my friends, and to my horror discovered that one of my friends(not the brightest) had also gotten 24/25! I was shocked, because the average score was 5/25, and I was expecting him to get 5-10. To this day it is a reminder to me to never take things for granted.

When I was in tenth grade, I remember going into math class one day somewhat frustrated, I guess, since we had to learn the quadratic formula that day. I know I am a person who forgets things quite easily, so i was like this is going to be a bad day for me. But instead of it being bad it was good for me. My teacher played the quadratic formula song for about half of the 45 minutes we were in class, and on the bus ride home I remember the song completely. To this day i only remember a little bit of it, but in math class i will always remember the quadratic formula now.

AP Chemistry is notorious around the country for being one of the most difficult AP subjects, and at my high school it was no different. However, at my school, things were a little different. My AP Chemistry teacher had made it clear to us from the first day of school that we would be successful in both the course and the challenging exam at the end of the year, and she was right. She had the ability to make us believe in ourselves by being the most committed and confident teacher from which I have ever had the pleasure of learning. I can remember staying after school for hours with my classmates preparing for the endless tests and rigorous labs, with my teacher present. This commitment allowed the class to develop a quasi-competitive, and wholly collaborative dynamic. We all pushed each other throughout the year, and it paid off. We were all successful, just as she had promised on the first day of school. I am now a student studying Chemical Engineering at Northwestern University, and everyday I am reminded of the excellent work of my high school AP Chemistry teacher. Science and engineering is more collaborative than ever before, and the lessons I learned in high school not only benefit my performance, but also enhance my experiences and passion for science. I firmly believe that the commitment and confidence exhibited by my teacher should be put into practice by science and math teachers across the country to ensure that a passion for these subjects fosters the next generation of great scientists and engineers in the United States.

When I was in 8th grade my science teacher really changed my view on Science as a subject. She made me more eager to learn about the different science subjects, like astronomy, earth science and chemistry. That year has changed the way that I study and learn about science even today. It changed my work ethics and even my grades to a degree. Looking back I may not remember everything that I was taught to learn about like songs and movies, but I will always remember the formulas and facts that were in those songs and movies that were drilled into me day after day so that we would remember them. I also will always remember the study skills that I learned in her class like the right ways to approach a lab or test. All and all 8th grade science for me changed my academic life for the better,

As an aspiring politician, I can’t say that STEM subjects are my favorite. By a long shot. Instead of finding the integral of a differential equation, I would much rather be finding how Scott F. Fitzgerald integrates complex literature themes into his novels. I mean, who wouldn’t? ‘Unfortunately’ for me, I’m in the International Baccalaureate Program–a program that puts an emphasis on being “well rounded” (aka, being good at things like math AND science at the SAME time!). In such a program, our teachers understand that while we might not get integration by parts or l’Hôpital’s Rule the first time around, we may treat Dante’s Inferno like child’s play, and, consequently, they’ve derived a solution; they constantly strive to integrate (ha, calculus pun) our math skills with our literacy skills, our foreign language skills with our science skills. This induces an environment where subjects aren’t simply bounded by name, fact, or figure, but rather, application to the “real world”. We are taught to see how each element of our classes connect to the real world, eliminating the ever common, discouraging “I’ll never use this outside of this class” mentality. Rather than a single turning point, this ongoing teaching method and more so understanding of our student body has presented a strong influence to my life. I’m actually, heaven forbid, enjoying my Calc BC class (as evident through cheesy Calculus puns)!

The part of science that I find to be special is the serendipitous inquiry. These are the things that stumble upon and find yourself learning about, either in the classroom or on your own. My eighth grade science teacher called these circumstances “teachable moments”, meaning that they were not part of the curriculum but could be made into a lesson quite easily with just a little bit of excitement and love for science. The best of these “teachable moments” that I encountered was on a common weekday morning, in my first period science class. Not only the twenty some odd students came to class that day, a stray banana managed to find its way into the room as well. This wasn’t just any banana though, it was the didn’t want to eat it at lunch so shoved it back in the locker banana. So in other words it had had time to ferment its inner squishiness for several days. After hearing about the new student (the banana), my teacher picked it up with a smile on his face, and a chuckle that meant he had a crazy idea and we were going to get out of doing the normal work of our 42 minute work period. My teacher pealed the banana into three strips of peel, and placed each on the floor with the inside down, against the tile floor. He then told us that today’s lesson was to test the action of friction and lubrication. Next, our teacher called on three students to ginny pig his experiment, two to stand beside the peel in the event that someone slip and fall, and one to step on the banana peel and test its lubrication. The first of us to step on the banana peel was a kid named Earl, he had heard of the extreme lubrication power of rotten bananas, but never tested it out so he had no idea how slippery it would actually be. When Earl stepped on the banana, it was like his foot became disconnected from the universe for a fraction of a second, and he fell backward and into the two other kids who kept him from hitting the floor. The whole class was in uproar at this point, and ecstatically trying to be selected to be the one to step on the next peel, and get their fix of the lubrication powers of rotten banana. When the period was over, all of the class had had enough laughs to last a weeks worth of class periods, and we left with smiles that screamed “serendipitous science” on our faces.

One memorable moment in my STEM education was when I was hired by the New York Hall Of Science as an Explainer Trainee. Working there has increased my interest in the STEM field, seeing that it is a STEM- centered career field. Because of the experience that I have had at the New York Hall of Science, I have realized that I would like to study mechanical engineering in college. In the process of learning that I wanted to become a mechanical engineer I focused more on my mathematics and science courses. That is my memorable moment in my STEM education.

My high school physics teacher was terrific. You never knew what day the next short snap quiz would be. They counted as part of your final grade. Most everyone everyday got to class way before the bell rang.

Science class has always been an interest of mine. Unlike math, or reading, or writing, science explained to me what was going on around me, not just what happened in some rule book dictating how we are supposed to read or write or solve equations. When I was in 8th grade, I came into my homeroom class and my eccentric teacher Mr. Mullen was holding an impromptu experiment using lubricants. When I walked in I was informed that a gross rotten banana had been kicked into our classroom. Instead of throwing out the squished banana, our teacher had the bright idea to show us how lubricants actually work. We’ve all seen people slipping on banana peels in the movies, or cartoons, and here we were given an opportunity to enjoy the comic relief while still maintaining a scientific standpoint. At the age of 8th grade we all welcomed the idea of watching our classmates slip on banana peels, but for me the appeal was to see if what we had learned about lubricants the week before actually applied in real life. The experiment was set up with three people, one to step on the peal mid-walk, and one holding each of his arms. As he walked forward we were all on the edge of our seats, then as soon as he put weight on the toe that was on the gross mess which was once a banana, he lost his footing and fell, only to be caught by the two guys holding his arms. This experiment was interesting and comical and it gave me a reason to be interested in science. Through this experiment I learned how science is a factor in everything we do in the real world, and even in TV and I’ll never forget it.

In a high school like mine, bright minds are selected and thrust together in a small space. As one would imagine, this creates intense competition. This determination to best those around you makes students reach outside their educational realms and search for something to focus their talents on. With this exploration came, for me, an unexpected love for the intricacies and perplexities of STEM research. Therefore, when I look at my educational experience (as an objective third party), it becomes clear that there is no single moment one can remember that taught him something. He who, upon finding no SINGLE memory, searches for the one moment, never truly experienced the wonders of the STEM fields. Instead, it is he who finds culmination of atmosphere, competition, curiosity, and drive, who has. For me, the value of the STEM fields does not only lie in the material they teach us (mathematics, technology, engineering, and the sciences), but in the life skills they provide and the passion they instill. There is no single MOMENT to look back on that will cause a student to truly appreciate STEM education, but each student who does, as I do, values sitting at a computer and researching for hours on end as much as they cherish hearing their name called in honor of their research.

Science has been an interesting subject for me because its not all about one topic. There’s basically and wide variety to study in science and there is always new discoveries being found. When I was a freshmen I had to come up with a science project. I thought long and hard on what I was going to do. While looking through cereal I noticed the words iron and I thought to myself hmmmmm is there really iron in cereal. So while I googled it I came up with extrodinary answers and soon developed the perfect experiment. I grabbed a bag of frosted flakes and began my process. I filled the bag with ceral and added water then mashed it all up. Then I grabbed a magnet and looked very carefully there were black specks the became attracted to the magnet. as soon as I got the iron out I felt like I made the most remarkable discovery in the science world. This is the story of my most memorable science project that I would cherish and remember for a long time.

Science is an incredible way of knowing whats all around you. Without science you wouldn’t know how the waves in the ocean is created. You wouldn’t know that the planets revolve around the sun because we would still believe that the Earth is in the middle of the solar system. Science is involved in your everyday life. Mathematics and Science come hand in hand with each other. But knowing one extremely well will help you out in the other. Math, you are always using equations to solve for certain things. Don’t you do that in science as well? But don’t they as use the same equations for most of the information in which you are tying to figure out. Both science and math interest me and i will further my education and will have a career in them.

In eighth grade I spent hours after school every week learning chemistry with my science teacher, who knew tons of chemistry and was an awesome teacher. I learned tons that semester– we didn’t have any homework or anything outside of class, but it’s still the best experience I’ve ever had with science in school. I left middle school eventually but held onto my love of chemistry– I’m still learning it like he taught me today (if you’re out there, Mr. Barton, thanks for what you did).

I’ve never thought of myself as the erratic mad scientist, curing cancer or treating lung diseases. Yet somehow, I find myself- a 100 pound scruffy 16 year old girl- doing just that. As a young girl, I never believed that I had the capabilities to do science- a word I reserved for the boy with glasses who always got A’s on math tests and learned long division first. It wasn’t until a UT Austin outreach program that I had an epiphany; just because I failed Algebra 1 the first time around didn’t mean I lacked a natural aptitude for science. The possibilities flooded my body, and I saw a world of possibilities; only a few of which were constrained by ability. I threw myself headfirst into particle physics and mechanics, only coming up for air when I felt like my head was going to explode. A year later, I began devising my own theories. I wanted to discover. I wanted to create something and become a part of this world I had never seen possible for myself. The summer of 2013 was when it really all began. After countless emails to professors, I stepped into my first lab. I half expected to crash and burn- after all, that’s what had happened in 8th grade Algebra and countless other chemistry classes. But boy, was I wrong. Every hour was the best hour of my life. Every new procedure, every technique, every machine lit up my mind. It was almost as though I could feel the neurons firing. Tonight I’ll finish up my Pre-Cal homework, browse Facebook a bit, and go to sleep. Tomorrow I’ll wake up and go to school. I’ll struggle a bit in Physics- I always do. But then I’ll catch an afternoon bus to UT, and spend hours in the lab- doing what I’ve always dreamed of. -Pia, Texas

Much of my life has revolved around STEM (mainly technology). However, I enjoy all STEM subjects and find them interesting. The most memorable moment for me this year was when my science teacher showed our class the differences in gas densities through experimentation. She shook up a flask and poured the invisible gas onto a ramp. She then lit the gas on fire to show how it had traveled down the ramp because it was more dense than normal air. I found this fascinating! It’s intriguing experiments like these that make me love science.

the ‘answer’ is TEACHERS, inspiring brilliant energetic and multifaceted humans known as teachers. this can’t be quantified as merely experience, it’s much more…

One of my most memorable experiences in school had to be taking engineering as a freshman four years ago. I had never taken a course like this before and I was the only female in the class. It was terrifying at first but as the months went by I became more comfortable. I remember designing 3D models of shapes and metal parts by hand and then using the computer software to design them. Even though at first I thought I would not do well in engineering I knew I wanted to take it to become an aerospace engineer or a pilot. I realized that sometimes you have to do something you do not want to do, in order to accomplish your goals or dreams. Now four years later I am taking honors calculus and even though I’m not the only girl in the class, math terrifies me. What I have learned in these classes I can use in life. Which is how to work in a group and be indepenent. These skills are vital not only for becoming an engineer but also being a leader in the real world.

My favorite memory from a science class happened a few years ago. It was my first science expo ever and our project was using different fuels (like backing soda and vinegar, diet coke and mentos, and water and alkali tablets) to fuel a few bottle rockets. The interesting story was in the diet coke and mentos, by accident we brought the wrong type of mentos, fruit instead of mint. If you’re not already aware, the only way foam is produced is with mint mentos due to the lack of candy costing and small crevices. That type of rocket just wouldn’t work and our group had to figure out why. I think I learned more from my failure than from a lot of successes I’ve had. I learned to make sure to check and double check before doing anything and to keep learning even after you make a mistake.

I always want for everything in my life to be concrete. By this, I mean that I want things to always have a precise answer and to never be too broad of a topic. However, throughout my middle school experience, I have learned that science is all around me. If someone asked me to list everything in the world involving science, I would never be able to complete the list. There are an infinite number of science relations in the world, from the way we move, to the way the Earth rotates. I have always loved science, but this has been a difficult concept for me. Though, along with the help of my science teachers, I have managed to accept the idea that science is not tangible. Now, I have learned to embrace and adore this concept, thanks to my teachers.

When I was in 6th grade, my class went on a field trip to an interactive exhibit. It tested us on skill and teamwork. We would simulate being in the International Space Station and the other group would be at mission control next door. We were able to get complete the mission quicker than any other class that’s been there. This exciting experience taught me patience, persistence, teamwork, and focus.

I was in seventh grade and we were in the middle of expo ( our science fair). The class was building a renewable and eco-friendly city and my group was in charge of electricity. We had wired all the cords to our three foot tall building and were warming up a solar lamp to see if our lights would work. As my partner, Mamie, was holding the heat lamp it started getting really hot. In a few minutes, the heat lamp had burned a huge hole through her thick cotton sweatshirt! She was very disappointed, but we were all ecstatic when we found out that the lights worked and we had used solar power to power a building! We did this buy attaching solar panels to the top of our building and attaching alligator clips from the wires of the solar panels to the lightbulb. We shone a solar lamp over the panels and to our amazement they worked! I will never forget the day that we used solar power to light up a building!

In 7th grade, I had a science teacher who everyone called Dr. Pete. He was respected and favored as the best teacher in the school by almost all the students because of his teaching methods that were abstract, funny, and a little outlandish . . . and yet extremely efficient and interactive. So we were at the end of a long Chemistry unit, at the beginning of the week, and it was five minutes past the time when class was supposed to start. All the students were in there seats, but everyone had the same question in their head—where’s Dr. Pete? Finally, Dr. Pete comes in, struggling to carry a moderately-sized cooler and placing it on the table at the front of the room. Then he announces: “Class, we’re going to start a lab that should last us until the end of the week.” Opening the cooler, a plume of steam dispersed from it. Turns out the cooler was filled to the brim with dry ice (or solid CO2). I don’t remember exactly what we did, but we tested out a whole bunch of properties and did a whole page-sized list full of experiments that lasted us through that entire week. During the week, we consistently went back to everything we had learned in the unit—and I mean everything. It was extremely fun, and I was never bored for an instant in that class. At the end of the week, I headed home for the weekend, the experiments and knowledge still fresh in my mind. As soon as I got home, I went on my computer and started researching as much of the material as I could remember. I was going in-depth with all the elements, their properties, different compounds, their real-world usage—everything. I spent around three hours doing that. I had always loved chemistry, and loved everything about it. But that was the day that I became fascinated by it.

When I was younger, I used to think that science was learning how plants grew and math was 2+3=5. In seventh Grade I was asked how many points are in this triangle. At first I tried to count the squares on the graph paper. Was I right? Not exactly. There is actually an infinite amount of points. At first it hurt my head to think about it, but then I slowly started t realize that math is so much more complex than even the pythagorean theorem. Some numbers are imaginary, there isn’t an answer to every problem, numbers don’t stop. The same thing applies with science. Science can be anything from the sky to your phone to bugs. Math and Science aren’t confined into a single concrete subject. Just like the number of points there are in a triangle, they are infinitely large.

Through out elementary school I had always thought Science was the most boring subject. However, once I reached Middle School that all changed. In seventh grade I had Mr. Twardowski as my Science teacher and he is the reason why I love Science so much now. He always made the class fun and kept all of the students attention for the full 42 minutes. He opened my eyes to so many things and inspired me to appreciate every little thing that surrounds us. One thing I will never forget about his class is an experiment he let us do which was to make glow sticks. Even though that may not sound like a big deal now, in seventh grade is was pretty cool. He always demonstrated and assigned experiments that were relevant and useful to our age group. He turned what I thought was the most boring subject into my favorite subject. I now envy chemists and physicists because of their talents and dedication for what they do. Science is such an amazing field to look into and it is not restricted into just a few things. When talking about Science, the sky is the limit and any person would be amazed at how thought-provoking it can be and how truly fascinating the world that we live in is. Science is a never ending learning experience and there is still so much out there to be discovered and because of Mr. Twardowski, I am motivated to explore beyond my boundaries and use Science as a guide to exploring the world.

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The La Salle Falconer

The High School Experience: A Personal Reflection

Filled with growth and life lessons, the high school experience has been a journey worth the climb.

Anna Waldron , Editor May 4, 2022

High school is arguably the most transformative time of a person’s life. My own experience has been filled with more memories, laughter, stress, and — most importantly, growth — than I ever could have anticipated when I began. 

The lessons I have learned about myself, about others, and about the world in the last four years have shaped who I am today, and that person is far from the naive 14-year-old girl who walked through those glass doors of La Salle nearly four years ago. I was oblivious to the overwhelming emotional distress that I would feel when I started high school. 

In some ways, it feels like an everyday battle. 

As a freshman, the struggle began with adjusting to what felt like a whole new world. I was desperately trying to make friends, considering I had only one. I never knew what it was like to feel alone in a school with so many people. I felt like I had to act a certain way or be a certain person in order to maintain a basic conversation with people in my classes or on my soccer team. 

Every day, my head was filled with an overwhelming concern about how I could manage to make myself look like someone with more friends than I actually had at the time. 

I remember constantly thinking, “I’ll start enjoying this at some point, right?” 

The truth is, I did. 

To anyone who is feeling the way I once felt, please know that those feelings do go away. By the end of my freshman year and into the next, I enjoyed myself. School wasn’t particularly challenging, and I was spending my weekends having fun with my friends and going to basketball games and sleepovers. I had finally created a routine and felt mostly content with my life, aside from daunting thoughts in my head telling me it was all a lie.

I think that’s something that all teenagers deal with. It comes with the age, the questions, “do my friends actually like me?” or “am I enough?” — “do people worry about me or have I tricked myself into thinking they do?” 

I continued to move throughout my sophomore year feeling a new level of comfort with my life. Then, the pandemic hit. 

The original two weeks of quarantine turned into two months, and then two years. The predictable high school experience I had become accustomed to was no longer my reality, and instead, high school turned into an atypical rollercoaster of isolation from all the essential parts of the experience. 

To say it was hard would be an understatement, but after the initial forced adjustment to a remote life, I was forced to be content without relying on others.

Without having to fear other people’s judgments of me or having to conceal myself in social situations to appear more “acceptable,” I gained independence and confidence within myself that I didn’t know existed.

Then finally — after over a year — the long-awaited return to school arrived. 

I rejoiced in my ability to thrive academically again and I was so relieved to feel like I was really learning. I reconnected with my friends, ate lunch outside, took finals, and then — after a blur of two months — the year ended. My junior year flew by like no other. 

When senior year rolled around, I felt out of place. I couldn’t imagine a world where I belonged to the oldest class at the school. In the beginning, it was odd getting used to, but after a few weeks, it was nothing but a thrill as I planned what the next weekend alongside my friends would hold. 

My friendships were flourishing and I was becoming closer and closer with people I had never really gotten to know. 

Unlike the three years prior, my senior year has felt like a stereotypical high school experience, and I could not be more grateful for it. 

I always thought of myself as someone who was above enjoying things like attending soccer games, getting ready for homecoming with my friends, singing karaoke in someone’s basement, or going to a trampoline park for an 18-year-old’s birthday party. 

The truth is, I’m not. 

I regret that I spent so long depriving myself of the things I love in order to fit a narrative that I created for myself. 

I love that I will graduate high school happier and more fulfilled than I ever felt during my other three years here. It feels like everything has finally come full circle, after all these years of feeling so alone. 

So yes, it was transformative. I am finally content with the person I have become and the life I have chosen to lead. I wouldn’t be the same without La Salle and I wouldn’t be the same without the people I’ve gotten to know here. 

I know that I will look back on my high school experience here, not feeling critical of the insecurities I have felt, but feeling grateful for the memories and lessons that came regardless of them. 

Senior Anna Waldron has lived in Portland, Oregon her whole life, in the same neighborhood as nine members of her extended family.  Outside of The...

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Mentor texts

Telling Short, Memorable Stories From Your Life: ‘My Secret Pepsi Plot’

An invitation to students to tell a meaningful story in a limited number of words, with an example from The Times’s Lives column to help.

By Katherine Schulten

Our new Mentor Text series spotlights writing from The Times that students can learn from and emulate.

This entry, like several others we are publishing, focuses on an essay from The Times’s long-running Lives column to consider skills prized in narrative writing. We are starting with this genre to help support students participating in our 2020 Personal Narrative Essay Contest .

Our Personal Narrative Essay Contest is inspired by The New York Times’s Lives column, which ran from 1996 to 2017 and featured “short, powerful stories about meaningful life experiences .”

The editor of the column once posted some advice on “How to Write a Lives Essay” to guide those who submitted to the column annually. Much of that advice applies to our contest as well.

For example, several points boil down to reminders to keep it simple, including tips like:

Don’t try to fit your whole life into one “Lives.”

Don’t try to tell the whole story.

Tell a small story — an evocative, particular moment.

Better to start from something very simple that you think is interesting (an incident, a person) and expand upon it, rather than a large idea that you then have to fit into a short essay. For example, start with “the day the Santa Claus in the mall asked me on a date” rather than “the state of affairs that is dating in an older age bracket.”

This advice is similar to advice often given to high school seniors writing college essays : You have only 650 words to show admissions officers something important, interesting or memorable about who you are and what matters to you. A list of awards you’ve won won’t do it, but an engaging story about making brownies with your stepbrother just might.

As you’ll see when you read the texts below, none of them try to tell the whole story of a life, but, instead, illuminate an important aspect of it through focus on one event or moment. Yet that one focus ripples out, and says so much more.

Before You Read

Use the sentence starter below to write for a few minutes about whatever comes to mind. You will return to this writing in the “Now Try This” section.

A moment I’ll never forget from my childhood is …

Mentor Text: ‘ My Secret Pepsi Plot ,’ a 2014 Essay From the Lives Column, by Boris Fishman

This essay describes a memory from when the writer was 10 years old and his family had just immigrated from the Soviet Union to Brooklyn. “In the Soviet Union, we were secretly wealthy, but we arrived in Brooklyn as paupers,” he writes.

Somehow, his family ends up with 24 Pepsi-Colas in their refrigerator. The story of what happens next is Mr. Fishman’s short, powerful story:

Around this time I learned that American supermarkets gave back 5 cents for every returned empty. (Some states, like Michigan, its very name like a granite monument, gave you 10 cents.) I decided I would return those cans and give the money to my parents. My secret — a surprise.

Read the essay, focusing on how Mr. Fishman anchors the whole story in this one goal he had at age 10 — to return the Pepsi cans and get money for them.

As you read, you might trace the structure of the story. What does each paragraph do? What does each add to the telling of this small story?

Then, consider these questions:

How do the first two paragraphs set the stage for the story and give some necessary background?

How does telling this story allow the writer to show readers a particular time and place through the eyes of a new immigrant?

How does he pull you into the action, minute by minute, in the three paragraphs that begin “On Saturday afternoon …”?

How is money a theme throughout, in both stated and implied ways? What other ideas recur?

What is the role of the last paragraph?

Now Try This: Find Your Own Short, Powerful Stories

Look back at the writing you did before reading the mentor text. What is strongest about it? Could it become a short essay like the one you just read? If so, what would you need to do to shape it?

What other small stories — or “evocative, particular moments” — from your life might make wonderful short essays?

In a 2010 lesson plan, “ Going Beyond Cliché: How to Write a Great College Essay ,” we suggest students first make a timeline of their lives, or of one period in their lives, brainstorming at least 20 events, big and small, that were significant to them for any reason.

You might try that, or you can brainstorm answers to this list of prompts — or both:

-A time I took a risk: -A time I learned something about myself: -A memory from childhood I think about often: -Something that happened to me that still makes me laugh: -Something very few people know about me: -Something I regret: -A time when I felt rejected: -Something I am really proud of: -Something that changed the way I think or look at the world: -How I am different from most people I know: -Some of my fears: -A time I felt truly satisfied: -A time I failed at something: -An object I own that tells a lot about me:

Once you’ve chosen a topic, you might try to free-write for 10 minutes or so, asking yourself as you go: What was most interesting or memorable about this? What images come to mind when you think about this topic? Do you picture a person, a scene, a place? Do you hear a conversation or a bit of music? Do you smell, taste or feel something?

Finally, if you are still stuck, we have a list of prompts from our site that can inspire narrative writing . Take a look and see if any of them spark ideas for you.

More Mentor Texts for Telling Short, Memorable Stories

While the entire Lives column is devoted to “short, powerful stories,” the pieces we chose below are especially student-friendly in terms of both their subject matter and the way the writers focus on “an evocative, particular moment.” Below each title, an excerpt from the piece.

“ How Ramen Got Me Through Adolescence ,” a 2014 Lives essay, by Veronique Greenwood

When I was in fifth grade, I developed an intense dislike of eating around other people. The cafeteria was a place of foul odors, gelatinous spills, horrific mixtures of chocolate pudding, fruit cocktail and ketchup consumed on dares, and I found myself fasting from breakfast, at about 6 in the morning, until 3:35, when I walked home through the woods from the bus stop. Each step up our hill, a narrow ridge in rural California, I fantasized about the big bowl of ramen I would make myself when I reached the top.

“ Charmed ," a 2015 Lives essay, by Laila Lalami

‘‘Wait,’’ I said. From my pocket I pulled out a brown suede pouch bearing the name of a little jeweler in Rabat, the kind of place you send your friends to and say, tell him I sent you. In the pouch was a necklace with a silver khamsa — a charm in the shape of an open palm.

“ Montana Soccer-Mom Moment ,” a 2010 essay from the Lives column, by Laura Munson

I live in northwest Montana, and I have a teenager, and my teenager plays sports. That means a lot of driving — over-the-Rocky-Mountains-and-back-in-one-day kind of driving. I think about Meriwether Lewis every time I cross the Continental Divide, usually with sleeping soccer players wearing headphones in the back of my Suburban. I want to say, “Can you imagine everything depending on your horse and your ability to dream of an ocean past the mountains?” But it isn’t worth the eye-rolling.

“ All the Single Ladies ," a 2014 essay from the Lives column, by Jen Doll

“Single ladies to the dance floor!” came the cry, a masculine voice urging us forward. Wedding guests parted, creating a narrow path for the train of unmarried women to parade through in their finery. But we single ladies no longer looked so fine as we had that morning. We were worn and tired, sweat beading down our necks, sand crunching unpleasantly in our shoes, which were wearing raw the backs of our heels. We should have been lying down in cool rooms elsewhere, but the wedding was not over. We were 28. We knew what was next.

“ Working the Reunion ,” a 2008 essay from the Lives column, by ZZ Packer

My residential college always hosted the 45th reunion, one of the most well attended, I suppose because you just might not be around for the 50th. To my eyes, these guys were the picture of old money. Although they may have mastered physics or appraised the sharp beauty of “King Lear” in school, at reunions they reminisced about football glories and practical jokes. I sometimes felt less like a Yale co-ed who happened to be black than a black waitress who happened to be bringing them an extra fork. But after their dinner we reunion workers would drink up all the leftover bottles of wine while cleaning the dining hall.

Related Questions for Any Short, Narrative Essay

What is the one small moment or event this piece focuses on? Why do you think the writer might have chosen it?

What do you learn about the writer and his or her world through this moment or event? How? What lines do this well? What is implied rather than stated?

How is the piece structured? What does each paragraph do? How does each contribute to the story?

Look closely at how the writer tells a complete story in a limited number of words. Where, in terms of time and place, does the story begin? Where does it end? How does the writer weave in necessary background even while keeping the action of the story moving forward?

What else do you notice or admire about this essay? What lessons might it have for your own writing?

Classroom Q&A

With larry ferlazzo.

In this EdWeek blog, an experiment in knowledge-gathering, Ferlazzo will address readers’ questions on classroom management, ELL instruction, lesson planning, and other issues facing teachers. Send your questions to [email protected]. Read more from this blog.

Response: ‘Field Trips Are Powerful Learning Experiences’

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(This post is Part One in a three-part series)

The new “question-of-the-week” is:

How can teachers maximize the learning potential of field trips?

Field trips are often the highlights of the year for students. At the same time, these field trips can be some of the most stressful days for teachers—not to mention all the paperwork hassles involved in planning them. Given that students love them and that teachers have to spend so much time into making them happen, how can we maximize their learning benefits?

Today, Jennifer Orr, Herb Broda, Anne Jenks, Russel Tarr, and Andrew Miller share their answers to this question. You can listen to a 10-minute conversation I had with Jennifer, Herb and Anne on my BAM! Radio Show . You can also find a list of, and links to, previous shows here .

I’ve compiled some of the pieces I and others have written about using “real” and virtual field trips at The Best Resources For Organizing & Maximizing Field Trips - Both “Real” & “Virtual.”

Response From Jennifer Orr

Jennifer Orr teaches kindergartners at a public, Title I school in the suburbs of Washington. She is an ASCD Emerging Leader , blogs at jenorr.com, and is @jenorr on twitter. She feels lucky to have a job she loves:

Field trips are powerful learning experiences but it is easy for them to pass quickly. Maximizing the learning requires thoughtful work done before and after the trip. Prior to the field trip, time must be allotted to get students interested and excited and to build some schema for the location and content to be explored. This can be done through watching videos, looking at maps and photographs and reading about the location. Collecting students’ questions about the trip, location, and content will also help increase interest in the trip.

During the field trip a variety of strategies will help students hold on to their excitement, curiosity, and learning. The list of questions collected before the trip is one tool. Carry the list with you, in a smaller format most likely, and reference it as possible answers or connections to the questions come up. Depending on the age of students, each one could be in charge of some of the questions throughout the trip. Another tool that can greatly enhance the field trip experience is a camera. Having students take photographs or video during the trip gives them a focus and offers resources to use after the trip. If students do not have their own cameras or phones for this purpose, small digital cameras can be attached to lanyards and shared throughout the trip. Again, students can be assigned specific tasks for capturing or can be free to see what interests them.

After the trip is the most crucial time to ensure learning is maximized. It’s easy to feel rushed to move on to other content or focus after a trip, but slowing down and spending time on the learning from the trip will ensure it was a worthwhile experience. If there are photos or video from the trip students can use them to create artifacts about their learning (videos, scrapbooks, nonfiction writing). Students can write thank you notes to people at the field trip location, to individuals in the school or district that may have helped with funding, or to chaperones who supported the trip. These thank you notes should include specific details from the trip. Throughout the year connections to the field trip should be made when possible as the concrete experience will support future learning.

Field trips can be expensive, complicated, and time-consuming, but with thoughtfulness and time they can be some of the most powerful learning experiences available for students.

Response From Herb Broda

Herb Broda is an emeritus professor of education at Ashland University. His books, Schoolyard-Enhanced Learning and Moving the Classroom Outdoors (Stenhouse Publishers), reflect Herb’s passion for helping teachers see ways to use the schoolyard as a teaching tool:

Field trips are still one of the best ways to provide concrete examples of abstract concepts. They are effective at all grade levels and in every content area. Since shrinking budgets have reduced field trip opportunities, it’s critical to maximize the experience. Here are a few thoughts to consider:

Pre-trip considerations...

• The curriculum should drive the field trip location. Maximum learning occurs when a field trip reinforces prior instruction or introduces content that will be expanded soon after the visit.
• Most historic sites, nature centers and museums have pre-visit materials adapted to different grade ranges. Check these out as you plan a visit. Some sites have beautifully crafted, grade-specific sessions, while others may have more generic “school group” presentations that need to be adapted for maximum learning.
• If you are going to hike at a public park or other outdoor location that is not staffed, be sure to visit the site within a week of your visit. It’s possible that your favorite trail may be closed, littered with undesirable items, or storm damaged.
• Show your class pictures of the field trip site. Pictures clarify the purpose of the visit and create a comfort level for students. Many sites offer virtual tours to build interest.
• Prepare your chaperones! The reality is that chaperones can cause problems as well as provide help. Simple tips like don’t use phones, be enthusiastic about the topic and engage with the group may sound unnecessary, but parents appreciate clear direction when placed in a somewhat unfamiliar role.

At the site/during the trip...

• Try to keep travel time short. The park fifty miles away may offer a few more amenities than the one twenty miles down the road, but is it really worth the extra travel time? That time could be spent doing a few more activities.
• If the ride was lengthy, plan a movement activity soon after you get off the bus. A few brief stretching exercises will release a little energy and make it it easier to focus on a tour or presentation.
• Have small groups pre-arranged. You know best what personality mixes should be avoided!
• Review behavior expectations before the activities begin. Site staff will also go over their rules, but duplication is reinforcing. It also is a comfort to the program leaders!
• Before you leave, have two or three student representatives thank site leaders on behalf of the class. A personalized gesture like that means so much to frenzied staff who see a blur of young faces every day.

After the trip...

Often the default post trip activity is simply a discussion of “who liked what”. It’s important to find out what made the biggest impression, but stopping there misses the rich curricular connections and concrete examples that make the trip educational.

Effective post trip activities provide the opportunity to reinforce content, expand content, or use the content to explore in new directions. Based on the nature of your trip, consider:

• Writing activities that capture key learning
• Webquests relating to the topic of the trip (student or teacher designed)
• Follow-up experiments for science related trips
• Concept mapping
• Project-based learning
• Independent research

Field trips provide rich exposure to environments and vibrant locations that reinforce what students learn in classrooms. The abstract comes alive through concrete experience!

Response From Anne Jenks

Anne Jenks is the principal of the McKinna Elementary School in Oxnard, Calif. She is a Leading Edge Certified Teacher and the 2015 CUE Site Leader of the Year:

Field trips are a wonderful way to provide enrichment, frontload content and expose students to learning opportunities that they might not otherwise experience. They offer students a chance to connect to real life examples of concepts they are studying and concretize ideas that may be abstract. In order to optimize the learning that field trips provide, it’s important to plan carefully and include activities that make students interactive learners.

When you are planning a field trip, be sure to find out if exhibits or other information currently being presented connect directly to subject matter that you are studying. Do some work ahead of time and prepare a scavenger hunt for things that you want to insure students will see during the trip. If students have access to a camera or device with a camera, have them take pictures of these things to be shared later during class, with parents and on your website or blog. Also, be sure to include a journal writing exercise where students can answer specific questions that you provide and also reflect on their thoughts as they go through the museum. These can be used to form the basis for a presentation that they will do in class.

Don’t have the money to take a field trip? Virtual field trips can be very powerful learning tools and many are free. They provide opportunities to travel to places and experience things that would have been impossible before the Internet. Many museums, libraries, state park systems, and other places of interest are available if you have a computer or iPad. A great way to find out about these opportunities is through Skype in the Classroom. The Skype field trips connect students with experts all over the world. PORTS (Parks Online Resources for Teachers and Students) is a great resource from the California State Parks system that allows students to visit state parks and interact with park rangers who collaborate with teachers to create lessons. Just searching for “Virtual Field Trips” in Google will reveal a host of possibilities from museum trips to a self-guided tour of the White House. The ability to search for trips outside of their geographic area, allows teachers to provide exciting experiences that target specific curricular needs.

Whether you choose traditional or virtual field trips, planning ahead will make the experience more meaningful and increase the learning potential for all students.

Response From Russel Tarr

Russel Tarr is head of history at the International School of Toulouse in France. He is also the author of ActiveHistory and ClassTools.net and organizes the Practical Pedagogies Conference :

Educational field trips are some of the most memorable and enriching educational events that students will experience in their school careers, and do not have to cost an immense amount in terms of time and money. One of my favorite field trips in this respect is the local knowledge “Scavenger Hunt” which I help to organise right at the start of the academic year for students starting the IB programme here at the International School of Toulouse. This is a superb ‘team building’ exercise, especially important when new students might be joining the school, and it additionally provides a healthy dose of local knowledge that students are unlikely to be familiar with. Such field trips also have tremendous potential for cross-curricular links, regardless of the area in which you live, and are also remarkably easy to set up.

Simply put, on the very first day of the new academic year, all of the Year 12 students take a coach trip to the center of the city. When they disembark, students are divided into groups of 3-5 people and each team is given a ‘mission sheet’ consisting of a series of questions and challenges that can be answered by visiting different places hinted at in various clues. For example, the first challenge is “Go to the gardens nearby which are named after a famous French Resistance leader from World War”. Once they arrive there, they answer a factual question relating to the place in question (‘Find a monument dedicated to a local mayor assassinated in 1914. Explain why he was killed’).

From this point, the ‘proceed to a place’ format can be repeated indefinitely: I used Google Maps to identify 10 key places around the city within walking distance, and then created a series of questions which guides them through clues from one place to another (“Proceed through the gardens till you reach a road named after the province regained by France at the end of World War One. Head West until you reach a square named after England’s patron saint” - and so on).

A final crucial ingredient is to provide a strict time limit. Teams must hand their completed sheets back to their quizmaster at the designated location before a specified time (so that we can all get on the coach on time, as much as anything else!). Failure to do so incurs a heavy penalty or even disqualification. In this way, an element of urgency is built into the event. There is always one teacher based at a central location in case students need to locate them urgently, and we also provide each group with the school mobile phone number.

One final tip for when you plan your own local scavenger hunt: it is not helpful to have all the teams following each other around in one large clump. Therefore, design the route in a broadly circular format consisting of several mystery locations (e.g. “Location A” through to “Location F”). Then, give each team a slip of paper which gives the actual name of a different particular place in the mission, and the question that it corresponds to in their activity pack. Each team then proceeds to its nominated location and works through the questions from that point forwards. In this way, all the students rotate through the locations independently and the chance of them following each other around is minimised. It also ensures that all of the key locations will be visited by at least one team, which is important for the class debrief when students return.

Response From Andrew Miller

Andrew Miller (@betamiller) is an instructional coach and educational consultant who focuses on project-based learning, assessment and student engagement. He is on the faculty for both ASCD and the Buck Institute for Education. He is the author Freedom to Fail and also writes regularly for Edutopia and ASCD:

Often, field trips occur near or at the end of a learning experience or unit. For example we might learn about salmon and the life cycle of the salmon, and then we go to the salmon hatchery to see the real life connection to the learning. While this can be a useful way to use field trips, we can use fields trips in more innovative ways. Since students are often excited about field trips, why not use it to launch the inquiry. Field trips can create wonder and excitement for learning, and so educators should leverage field trips as a tool to launch questions and research. Imagine, you go to the zoo and see all the amazing animals. You come back to the classroom and your teacher shares that you will be learning more in depth about animals. Immediately you have questions, and your teacher uses these questions to create student-centered inquiry.

Another great use of field trips is to use it to feed the inquiry. After students have asked questions and learned a bit, teachers can use the field trip to answer further questions and generate new ones. I experienced this myself as learner. In a project that explored immigration and the themes of barriers and opening doors, we looked at photos from Angel Island in California. We students had some many questions. After generating these questions, we were lucky enough to take a field trip to Angel Island and do on-site fieldwork to find answers to our questions. In addition, we came up of with new questions on the spot we wanted to explore once we returned to the classroom. These are just two innovative ways teachers can use field trips for learning. Ultimately field trips can be used to not only answer questions, but also create them.

Thanks to Jennifer, Herb, Anne, Russel and Andrew for their contributions!

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My Student Teaching Experience: Lessons Learned

The student teaching experience allows you to put everything that you’ve learned about education and your subject matter into action. You get to test the waters under the supervision of an experienced teacher who can guide you along and help you become the kind of teacher that you want to be. If you embrace the opportunity, you can learn a lot from the experience. In fact, here are some things that I learned during my time as a student teacher .

Prepare for the Unexpected While Student Teaching

During my student teaching experience, I spent a lot of time preparing each lesson plan . I worked hard to research different ways to present the information for each lesson. I looked for activities that my students would enjoy, and I made sure that I had all of the materials and other things that I needed before class started. Even then, there were always things that would go wrong. Technology would fail. Students would complete activities quicker than planned. Or students would require much more time and explanation than expected.

As such, I realized that I needed to be prepared as much as possible, but, more importantly, I needed to prepare to be flexible. You never know what’s going to come up or what will catch the students’ attention. When creating lessons, remember that you need to be prepared for changes. Figure out alternative activities in order to help your day go as smoothly as possible and allow your students to gain the most from the lessons.

Make Friends

Teaching is difficult. You’re going to have rough days, and you’re going to need help sometimes. Introduce yourself to the librarian, cafeteria staff, administrators, custodians, secretaries, and other teachers. Of course, finding a teaching mentor is always a good idea. As I talked to other teachers about lessons that I was working on, they had plenty of suggestions for activities that I could use. I loved getting ideas for tried and true activities for my students, but I also enjoyed the tips and ideas that they could provide to help me grow as a teacher. They could also help you land a teaching job, too.

Not only can making friends prove to help you as a teacher, but it can also make your day more fun. Rather than eating lunch in your room every day to catch up on work, go to the lunch room and mingle with other teachers. Talk to teachers on the playground. Use the time to get to know others, and you just might end up making a friend for life.

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“dare to disturb the universe:” be fearless as a student teacher.

In high school, I had a teacher who always encouraged us to “dare to disturb the universe” as quoted from T.S. Eliot’s poem, “ The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock .” To me, this meant that we shouldn’t be afraid to do something different or to think outside of the box. When it came to student teaching, I found that I needed to listen to this advice again. I wanted to excel. I wanted to get great recommendations from my cooperating teacher, and I wanted my students to really learn the concepts.

What I found was that student teaching was the perfect time to think outside of the box and try different things. If they didn’t work, they didn’t work. At least, I got to try them in a safe environment. And in the process, I got to work on vital skills for teaching, such as classroom management. Luckily, I had an awesome cooperating teacher who set me free to try new things. Of course, it was always helpful to have my cooperating teacher review my lesson plans and advise me on things that I could do to improve my ideas to ensure that they were viable in the classroom.

Show Confidence

Confidence is crucial for a great student teaching experience. Students need to see that their teacher knows what he or she is talking about. They need a teacher that demands respect. When I first started as a student teacher, I was awkward and unsure of myself. I wasn’t sure what my cooperating teacher would think, and I worried about how my students would perceive this teacher who didn’t look old enough to teach in the first place.

As I fell into my groove and gained more confidence as a teacher , I found that my students not only respected me but felt more comfortable talking to me, too. Confidence meant I could be myself while still demanding respect from my students and colleagues.

Get Involved

Immersing yourself and taking advantage of every opportunity afforded to you can really enrich your student teaching experience. One of my biggest regrets as a student teacher was that I didn’t get involved more. Sure, I attended all of the meetings and met with parents. With the amount of work I put into creating lessons, I chose not to volunteer in after school activities, for example. I wish that I would have taken the opportunity to get more involved. You can gain more experience, meet more people, and find a new niche within the teaching community.

Seek Feedback on Your Student Teaching

One of the most important lessons that I learned was the importance of feedback. During your student teaching experience, you want to find ways to improve your teaching skills. Don’t be afraid to ask your cooperating teacher for advice. When observing you in action, he or she will notice things that you hadn’t noticed before. Maybe you use too many filler words, look at the floor too often, or stand in one place the entire time. Your cooperating teacher can point out these things to you, so you can make the necessary changes to improve.

More than just asking for feedback, you need to have a good attitude about the information that you receive. What will you do with this information? I found that when I was teachable and willing to hear criticism, I saw greater improvements in my teaching and increases in my confidence.

Student teaching was a great experience. It had its ups and downs, but I became a better teacher by working to make the most of my experience and looking for opportunities to learn.