Tivan George, News Writer

Ever since the 2016 Jakarta Intercultural School child abuse scandal, overnight school trips with the exception of VASE and retreats were halted. However, on Sept. 14, the GSIS senior biology class held an overnight school trip for educational purposes. Could this mean overnight school trips are going to make a comeback?

It was not easy to get this event to work. Ms.Chan said she had to go “through the correct channels to get the approval” that she needed.”

She also thinks “as long as you’re establishing barriers to protect the students and to protect yourself as a teacher”, then there is no problem.

Ms.Chan also commented on this situation with camping trips and the Jakarta child abuse scandal in 2016 is like how “when one person makes a mistake, no one else get’s do anything.”

It could be said one of the reasons this event was allowed to exist is the fact it was educational, however, Joshua Jung, senior biology student said, the event was more of an experience that allowed them to create better bonds.

Joshua believes non-educational trips should also be held since it allows students to take a break and focus on building stronger bonds with their classmates and learning social skills.

Lucas Lee, another biology student who participated in the event, thinks events such as this can come back because he doesn’t “see what the big problem is especially if it’s on campus. Even if it’s out of school, as long as there are teacher chaperones and it’s a school function, I don’t think it should be that it should be a big deal. It was fun, so that’s what matters.”

The Juniors certainly hope this is the case since they plan to hold an overnight camping trip later on in the school year.

This camping trip, according to Ms.Chan, the Biology teacher, was to give the students “more of a hands-on exploration of learned in Biology”. This meant that the Biology students got real life (even if artificial or controlled) experience about what they were learning in the class.

During the camping trip the students identified local species of flora and fauna, as well as creating their own pizzas for dinner, which was related to a topic previously learned.

According, to Ms.Chan, it was interesting how little of an outside portion there was to biology, which explains one of the reasons she held this event, which was to “just take them out, even if it was in a more artificial scenario like the soccer-field.”

Out of class learning presents students with a chance to apply their learning, thus allowing them to fortify their knowledge.

According to a study carried out by UC Berkley, a student’s capacity for learning increases when they have out of class or out of school learning experiences. Although it is quite improbable and impractical to have an event such as the camping trip everyday, frequent educational experiences such as these can aid learning in both the targeted subject as well as several other subjects. 

Joshua thinks “although it was educational, [the event] was more of an experience that allowed us to create better bonds and be better friends.”

They got to know each other better and it created a better classroom environment, which helped them to study better. It is arguably important to make sure classroom dynamics (the interactions between classmates with teachers and other classmates) exist in order to create a healthy learning environment. This is especially important since many students share multiple classes together.