Reflections of Bus Trip #19

General Comments About the Trip

Overall, the trip was a great lifetime experience that I will cherish forever.  I got to travel with some great people and share my passion for education with them.  The biggest impact on me was how the schools across Georgia vary so much and how each school states that it is all about the students and serving them.  I'm honored and blessed to have attended this Bus Trip and receive new innovative strategies to one day incorporate into my classroom.  I loved all the kids and having the chance to be with them and help them learn.  I loved how each of these schools and how each teacher had a passion for helping students learn best.

I loved this trip.  I believe I can take a great deal back to my future classroom.

Great!  It was great to see so many people - administrators, teachers, government and community members - working so hard to promote education.  Most of these schools worked outside the box in order to implement engaging lessons and classrooms.

It was definitely a wonderful learning experience that enabled me to see great teaching occuring first-hand.  I'm definitely planning to steal many ideas that I saw and use them in my own classroom.  I have seen that great education is possible when student learning and success is the focus of the school and the community.

The choice of schools was impressive; each one was different than the one before it.  Despite the differences, their commitment to the overall theme of the Bus Trip was evident.  Good job!

As an art teacher, I was a little disheartened to see art, for the most part, removed from the education-success equation.  I realize that for the time being, the bigger fish to fry are reading and math.  Hopefully, as Georgia is turned around, art for art's sake will be added back into the equation.  Art is very different than everything presented on this trip, but the main thing is how will I make art and art history relevant to a student, especially those who say, "I'm no good at art."  How can I use technology to reach a child of the 21st century to help them see the relationships between them and their society?  What visual mark will they leave behind for the generations to come to read about in an art history text book?

As a future teacher, this trip reassured me that I am going into the right field.  Educating is something I love.  I want to make a difference; this bus trip showed me a few ways I can.

I will return (home) with a mission to cultivate relationships within the community, to enlist pre-service teachers and business partners to get into classrooms and sponsor programs that assist with identified needs of their school communities.

The Golden Isles Career Academy made a great impression on me because it helps students who might think of dropping out of school because of other opinions they might have.

Thank you for this opportunity!  This year's bus tour was quite different from my first trip in 2009.  This tour included a great deal of administrators, college and high school students, and community partners. This was not only an opportunity to learn about things/programs that are working in classrooms, but also an opportunity to learn from those who are overseeing different programs.

Thank you for all your hard work.  As always, after months of planning, another successful trip has taken place.  I hope I will be able to attend next year because the excitement to see where will it be and what will we see is always there.  Thanks to everyone for a job well done!

I'm so thankful for this opportunity to see what is out there.  I love teaching and being a leader in our society today.  So I'm thankful for the relationships that I have created.  I enjoyed seeing all the schools and I look forward to maybe getting the chance to attend next year.

It was great to see that the community had so much involvement in the schools.  They play a huge role in their success.  Visiting all eight schools opened my eyes to realize it is possible.

If I could design the perfect school, it would look and feel a lot like the ones we saw; especially Golden Isles and Ware County.  It was also great to see various instructional styles.

I was blown away at how important the physical environment is to schools.  It shapes the feel and usefulness of the schools.  The trip was a wonderful opportunity to see the good, the bad and the in between of schools.  It was also a great place to see like-minded individuals come together.

Overall the best practice I would say is community involvement!  It amazed me to see the level of community involvement in every school.

I loved the enrichmernt/remediation built into the school day.  Community involvement, teachers exhibiting morally strong leadership, use of technology, differentiated instruction, standard based classrooms, engaged students.... these are my Bus Trip memories.