DELANA PENN & ashton hampton

Summary This workshop will provide both students and teachers the opportunity to expand their learning beyond the walls of the classroom into a world beyond the city limits of Baltimore, Maryland. It is our objective to use field trips as a tool to afford students experiences which cannot be duplicated in the classroom setting but are nonetheless an integral part of instruction. Trip excursion(s) can best be described as a living laboratory in which learning is acquired through an active hands-on experience with rich resources provided by the world of travel. The objective of this workshop is to provide travel experiences which will increase each student’s knowledge and understanding in the subject areas of fine arts, culture and history. Field trips offer student’s realism to their topic of study and will provide an opportunity to develop and enhance their socialization and citizenship skills.

Delana Penn is an enthusiastic Library Media Specialist offering 17 years of experience in the field. Delana is dedicated to staying on the cutting edge of education through travel. She believes insightful traveling generates ideas for collecting, recording and analyzing personal thoughts and self-observations for her students. As a teacher, she furnishes her students with the utmost travel scenarios to step outside themselves and become liberating forces both in and out of the classroom. Delana accentuates the influence travel plays in education to her students that could not be achieved by other means. Field trips permit students to experience museums, cultural history, art galleries and the marketplace whether in-person or virtual. Therefore, her goal and objective is to provide an opportunity for the students to examine another country’s culture, history and industry in order to collect information and incorporate it into real life scenarios. Delana’s travel expeditions will hopefully open and expand the minds of her students who have never experienced life outside of Maryland by providing them real life exposure to another part of the world. As Van Doren observes: "A teacher can fool his colleagues; he may even fool his President; but he never fools his students. As they know when he loves his subject and when he does not.”

Ashton Hampton has been teaching biology for the last 7 years at Mergenther Vo-Tech High School. Originally from Denver, CO, her love of traveling led to her to want to lead this workshop. COVID has stopped many of us from traveling and virtual field trips have been a huge help. They have provided students with opportunity to travel all over the world. They have also given students enrichment and cultural experiences.