Glen Lake Go!

• Our students will learn that their education goes beyond our classroom and school walls.
• Our students will learn that their curiosity and voice matters.
• Our students will have a say in where they go, why to go there, and have a voice to share what they learn.
• Our students will learn in a way that is truly cross-curricular and not siloed.
• Our students will learn that they are part of a greater whole by connecting with our community in their learning experiences and service projects.
• Our community will benefit from these connections to our students as well.

As part of Vision 2031, we want to reimagine how we educate our children, and offer a more engaging, authentic school experience for our children. An idea that has garnered a lot of interest and emotion amongst our teachers and families is to offer more real-world, engaging experiences through frequent field trips. These experiences can be as simple as visiting a local grocery store for learning around core disciplines, like learning about the engineered design of a loading dock, money with purchasing produce, and technology by learning about tools and equipment to help move pallets. We have a very involved parent community with a high level of support to volunteer.

- Dr. Rhoda Mhiripiri-Reed, Superintendant

Glen Lake Go! is currently being funded in part by Glen Lake Elementary's PTO and a Hopkins Education Foundation (HEF) grant that was awarded in Spring 2021.

Learning comes in many different forms. Not all students learn best through direct instruction. Many students benefit from hands-on and real-world learning opportunities. Also, there are many inequities in the learning experiences our students have the opportunity to experience outside of school. By embedding this in the Glen Lake instructional framework, ALL of our students will benefit from this rich, authentic learning experiences.

Glen Lake Go will provide students with more learning experiences that are meaningful to the content and standards that students are learning in the classroom. Many of our students have economic barriers that prevent them from experiencing opportunities that broaden perspectives and captivate curiosity. This model would help eliminate those barriers. 

The energy and enthusiasm that students exhibit on days of field trips are unique and special. Students love to see new things and be in different environments. The learning experience will be enhanced because different than a typical field trip, students will have opportunities to choose where their class will go, as well as a creative platform to share out what they learned. This will come in the form of blogging, video creation, or presentation.

Students will be engaged by being provided more field trip experiences that align more closely with their everyday learning. They will also be engaged because they’ll have voice and choice in their experiences. For example, one grade level may have a week where they will offer 3 experiences. Students will choose an experience that is most interesting to them, similar to an elective at the middle school and high school level. This will provide differentiation for our students.

Currently, each grade level takes between 2-3 field trips a year. Our long term goal is for a classroom take a trip every 21 days.

Teachers will evaluate current curriculum and see where more authentic, unique experiences could be accessed to replace or supplement classroom learning. The idea, too, would be to have the flexibility to take field trips in a more spontaneous fashion. If a topic is being studied in the classroom on Monday, and students and teachers discuss ways to enrich it with an experience, that classroom could make the trip later in the week.