For Clarke County School District students, getting back to normal means going back to UGA for annual field trips.
In the fall, a group of pre-Kindergarten students were the first Clarke County School District (CCSD) students on campus for a school trip since early 2020. Their visit to the UGA State Botanical Garden of Georgia included collecting acorns from the woods and learning how squirrels store them to eat during the cold winter months.
The activities at the garden were related to the five senses, something the students would study in the pre-K curriculum this year. They wandered the Hummingbird Trail, looking for birds, matched color cards with the colors of plants in the garden and enjoyed a puppet show.
“With the pandemic, the students have been limited to the classroom, so it’s beneficial for them to leave the school and do something new,” said Caroline Joseph, who teaches pre-K at Whit Davis Elementary School. “They love puppets and will remember the characters.”
Experience UGA began in 2013 through a partnership between UGA and the CCSD. Facilitated by the Office of Service-Learning, a UGA Public Service and Outreach unit, the program’s objective was to introduce even the youngest students to learning on a college campus and meeting UGA students. The program grew gradually each year with the full CCSD student body, almost 12,000 students, visiting UGA in 2018-19.
“For most students, this is the first field trip of their life,” said Audrey Stadler, children’s education coordinator at the State Botanical Garden of Georgia. “Some may never have been to the garden or had access to nature, and they get to meet new people and experience new things.”
The Office of Service-Learning received more than $10,000 this spring from the UGA Parents Leadership Council (PLC) to help defray the costs of running Experience UGA. Since 2017 the PLC has been a loyal supporter of Experience UGA by contributing to both the transportation of CCSD students to UGA’s campus as well as the Experience UGA Ambassador Leadership Program. The Ambassador Leadership Program trains UGA students to become service leaders at the university and later in their careers.
Exerience UGA and in-person CCSD classes stopped in mid-March 2020, as cases of COVID-19 continued to increase in Georgia and around the world. The 2020-21 school year began with students learning remotely, returning to the classroom in November. There were intermittent closures through spring 2021 as cases rose and fell. During that time, UGA students, faculty and staff created online content to continue the field trips, remotely.
