Back to School, Just for the Field Trips: 10 NYC Field Trips Worth Taking Again
As a kid, and if I’m being fair, even as an adult, I was never the biggest fan of school.
Getting up early to sit through classes I was convinced I’d never need. Spending the last few minutes of class silently praying the teacher would forget to assign homework, only to have that one kid, we all know who, raise their hand and remind them. And when the dismissal bell finally rang, I’m not sure there was anyone out the door faster than me.
But there were a few days every year when all of that changed. Field trip days.
On field trip days, I couldn’t get to school fast enough. You got to skip class, pile onto a school bus with your friends, and spend the day at the aquarium, the zoo, a museum, basically anywhere that wasn’t school.
Sure, there was usually a worksheet or scavenger hunt involved. The school had to at least pretend there was some educational value to letting a bunch of kids run around the aquarium for six hours, but that was a small price to pay. Field trips were some of the best days of the school year so naturally I have to ask:
Why did we stop taking field trips just because we grew up?
Now that I’m out of school and in the workforce, the closest thing I get to a field trip is walking out to grab a cup of coffee with a coworker between meetings. Somehow, adulthood decided that spending an afternoon wandering around a museum, watching sea lions at the zoo, or exploring somewhere you’ve never been is something you only get to do on weekends and vacations.
I’d like to change that.
So, with kids across New York City heading back to school, I thought it was time for the rest of us to go back too, but just for the field trips. I’ve put together ten of my favorite NYC spots for an adult field trip. And because this is technically school, each one comes with an assignment. We do have educational standards to maintain around here.
So grab your permission slip, pack a lunch, and find a buddy because the field trip starts now.
1. New York Transit Museum
If you grew up in New York, there's a decent chance you actually came here on a field trip. And even if you didn't, spending the day inside an old subway station filled with vintage subway cars feels exactly like something your fourth-grade teacher would have planned.
The New York Transit Museum is located inside the decommissioned Court Street subway station in Downtown Brooklyn, and its collection takes you through more than a century of New York transportation history. Best of all, you can actually climb aboard many of the historic subway cars.
Your assignment: Head downstairs and find the oldest subway car you can. Compare it to the train you took to get here.
Extra credit: Find an old subway advertisement that would definitely not make it past the MTA's marketing department today.
2. Bronx Zoo
Few destinations scream FIELD TRIP quite like the zoo. Instead of sitting through a lesson about animals, you're spending the day watching gorillas, giraffes, tigers and whatever other animal decides it wants to cooperate that day.
The Bronx Zoo is enormous, which also makes this the perfect excuse to turn off your computer, ignore your inbox and spend an entire weekday walking around outside. You're learning, after all.
Your assignment: Find an animal you had no idea existed before today and come back prepared to tell the class one interesting fact about it. And yes, watching the gorillas for 45 minutes counts as research.
3. Museum of Modern Art
Time for art class. MoMA is home to works by some of the most famous artists in the world, which means this is your chance to stand in front of a painting worth millions of dollars and quietly think: I could have made that. It's practically a requirement of visiting a modern art museum.
Your assignment: Find one piece of art that makes you say, “I could have made that.” Write down the artist and title. Then find one piece that makes you immediately take back what you just said.
4. Governors Island
There is something about taking a ferry that automatically makes a trip feel more like a field trip. Governors Island is just minutes from Manhattan, but once you're there it can feel surprisingly removed from the city.
Today it's a place to bike, picnic, explore and enjoy some incredible views of New York Harbor, but the island also has centuries of military history. See? Educational.
Your assignment: Find one piece of Governors Island's military past hiding in plain sight.
Extra credit: Find the best view of Lower Manhattan. This one is subjective, so you'll need photographic evidence to defend your answer.
5. Mets or Yankee Game
Today we're learning about statistics. Whether you head to Yankee Stadium or Citi Field, an afternoon baseball game might be the ultimate adult field trip, especially if you can find a weekday day game. Because if you aren't sitting at your desk at 1:05 on a Wednesday, it somehow feels even better.
Your assignment: Keep score for one full inning the old-fashioned way. Then calculate the batting average of your favorite player. See? Math.
Lunch assignment: Hot dog. Obviously.
6. American Museum of Natural History
If there were a Field Trip Hall of Fame, the American Museum of Natural History would be a first-ballot inductee. Dinosaurs. Meteorites. The planetarium. That enormous blue whale. You could spend an entire day here and still only see a fraction of the museum, which is exactly why your teacher used to hand you a worksheet to stop you from aimlessly wandering around for six hours.
We won't be doing that. Mostly.
Your assignment: Find the biggest dinosaur in the building, then find the smallest one you can. After that, report to the blue whale. Because everyone needs to stand underneath it at least once on a proper NYC field trip.
7. Central Park
Not every field trip needs to involve a museum. Sometimes the lesson is simply getting outside and exploring. Central Park gives you 843 acres to do exactly that, with lakes, bridges, trails, statues, wildlife, historic structures and plenty of places where you can completely forget you're in the middle of Manhattan.
Which brings us to today's lesson: navigation.
Your assignment: Find your way to Belvedere Castle using only park signs and your rapidly deteriorating sense of direction. No Google Maps. Along the way, identify three animals that aren't pigeons.
Lunch will be eaten outside. Trade snacks accordingly.
8. Intrepid Museum
Today's lesson: science, technology and history. But mostly really cool airplanes.
The Intrepid Museum is built around the USS Intrepid, an aircraft carrier that served during World War II and the Cold War before eventually becoming a museum on Manhattan's West Side. Today you can explore the ship, see military aircraft, walk through a submarine and even visit a space shuttle.
This might be the easiest educational justification on the entire list.
Your assignment: Find the Space Shuttle Enterprise, then head below deck and imagine living aboard an aircraft carrier for months at a time. Your teacher would like you to learn something about American military and technological history, but you'll probably spend most of the time looking at airplanes. That's acceptable.
9. The Metropolitan Museum of Art
You knew there was going to be at least one serious museum field trip.
The Met is basically several field trips rolled into one. Ancient Egypt? Check. Medieval Europe? Check. Greek and Roman art? Check. Paintings you've seen reproduced a thousand times but never actually stood in front of? They're here too.
The only problem is deciding where to start. So I'm giving you a scavenger hunt.
Your assignment: Find:
The oldest thing you can.
The strangest thing you can.
One piece you'd actually hang in your house.
Extra credit: Locate the Temple of Dendur without asking a museum employee for directions.
No running in the halls.
10. New York Aquarium
We're ending our field trip at the beach. The New York Aquarium sits right on the Coney Island boardwalk, which already makes this significantly better than whatever classroom you were supposed to be sitting in today.
Spend a few hours with sharks, sea turtles, fish and sea lions and you can legitimately claim you spent the day learning about marine life. What you do after leaving the aquarium is between you and your teacher.
Your assignment: Find the weirdest-looking sea creature in the aquarium and learn one fact about it. Then watch the sea lions and pretend you're observing animal behavior for educational purposes.
Once the assignment is complete, class is dismissed to the Coney Island boardwalk.
Class Dismissed
Maybe field trips were never really about getting out of school. Okay, they were mostly about getting out of school. But there was something great about having an entire day set aside to go somewhere different, explore a place you might not normally visit and learn something without sitting behind a desk.
And I don't know why we decided that had to stop when we became adults.
New York is basically one enormous field trip waiting to happen. There are museums you've walked past a hundred times but never entered, neighborhoods you've never explored, parks you've never wandered through and places you probably haven't visited since you actually were on a school field trip.
So this fall, while the kids are heading back to school, maybe it's time for the rest of us to go back too. Just skip the classes, we're only here for the field trips.
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