Field trips are still possible, even during remote learning. And you don’t even have to leave home!

Seventh-grade teacher Ms. Spoelstra will take her history classes (cohorts 7-1 and 7-2) on a virtual field trip on Thursday, March 11. Ms. Spoelstra’s students are going to virtually travel across the Hudson River, up to the northern tip of Manhattan in New York City. They are going to a museum called The Met Cloisters.

”I am super excited that my two 7th-grade classes have an upcoming virtual field trip to the Met Cloisters museum,” said Ms. Spoelstra.

This virtual field trip will take the classes 45 minutes on a Google Meet, with “inquiry-based conversation” led by a Met representative. The Met Cloisters staff will guide them through a virtual tour of art and culture of the Middle Ages. Ms. Spoelstra says it’s “perfect,” since her classes are currently studying a unit of Europe in the Middle Ages.

The museum is 20 miles from Passaic, but Ms. Spoelstra says the students will be using their imaginations like they are traveling over thousands of years back in time, across the Atlantic Ocean and about 3,000 miles to the Middle Ages in Europe. 

“The Met Cloisters is the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s second location,” said Ms. Spoelstra. “It was built to look like Medieval buildings and numerous examples of Middle Ages art and gardens.” 

She added that she hopes that this virtual field trip will be a great experience and journey for her students. Ms. Spoelstra wished they could go to the museum in person, but maybe next year.