Leonia Domestic and International Trips
At Leonia High School, students are exposed to many different learning experiences through field trips. From the international trips over spring break (one even to Japan this year) to day trips into New York City’s many museums, students get to experience the rich culture of their community and the wider world.
The first out of school field trip at Leonia High School in the 2024-2025 school year was with the Leonia Academy for Hospitality and Culinary Arts Academy. The Culinary Academy is known for taking their students on out-of-school domestic field trips to expose the bright Culinary students to real life experience they gain outside of the kitchen. During the month of October, they visited the Riamede Farm to gain an understanding of how organic farm fresh apples can be used in the kitchen for versatile purposes.
Gabe Jang, a junior in the Culinary Academy, described the experience: “We had a long bus ride, sat in a barn and learned about the climate of apples growing (how they grow), walked around and picked some apples from the apple trees, had downtime to enjoy the apples we picked, and visited the store that the farm owns … on their property.” After gathering the opinion of many of his peers, Gabe Jang claims, “It was nice because we got to make a lot of stuff with apples (mini apple pies, mini apple muffins, random stuff with apples but all mini).” The only complaint he stated was the rainy weather but that is an external factor that is out of the schools’ control.
History teacher Ms. Kelty, one of the supervisors for many international and domestic history-related trips, was able to provide more insight into how she plans her field trips months in advance to guarantee success. When it comes to planning any field trip, Ms. Kelty states, “I always think about what my kids are usually interested in and how it is going to tie into the classroom. For the international trips, it is more about building an itinerary based on what would be or is the most popular destination with kids. I love building connections from class and seeing the process of students enjoy[ing] what they are learning inside of the classroom. For now, I am pushing to plan more field trips with the Historians and Democracy club, mostly local day trips on weekends and out of school. For the international trips, I would love to take the kids to either Germany or Poland (and 2 other secret locations) but much of this decision is based heavily on what will be happening in the world.”
This spring, Mr. Linares is planning to take science students to Japan to explore the international tech hub. Last year, Mr. Linares brought science students to Switzerland, where they had the opportunity to visit the Large Hadron Collider (aka. CERN Super Collider) as well as visit the unforgettable Alps.
The future’s looking bright for Leonia High Schools domestic and international field trips. The general student body population seems to enjoy field trips and hopes the school will consistently incorporate more as the school year progresses.
