Going Places with Pono!

Each Pono child has their favorite thing about school, and mine is field trips! I love going out into the city and exploring. We take two or three trips a week. There is a wide variety, such as going to a science lab to dissect cow eyeballs, to City Wing Tsun for kung fu, or to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to roam through their beautiful galleries. At the end of every term we have a long trip, when we go to a place that’s farther away and takes more time to get to, like the Statue of Liberty, Philadelphia, or the Cradle of Aviation Museum. We even took a really, really long trip last year to Costa Rica! My personal favorite was when we visited our science teacher, Dr. A, in upstate New York. We had a BBQ lunch (yum!), played badminton (not my best sport, but it was fun!), ran around, caught bugs, and harvested radishes from her garden.

When school was closed because of COVID-19, I was really disappointed. We could do math and literature online but couldn’t take field trips. Or so I thought. But we came up with a solution: virtual field trips! One example was taking a trip through Google Arts and Culture. My classmates and I looked at art from all around the world with our teacher. (I visited the Van Gogh Museum in the Netherlands from my bedroom). We’ve also studied different cultures. My friends and I “visited” Japan and learned about the history of Japanese food (yum x10). Of course, it’s not like a regular trip, but it’s pretty close. When this is all over, we’ll have so many trips. In the meantime, practice social distancing, wash your hands, and definitely check out how you can go places, even when you’re inside.

Stay safe out there,

Zoë Smita Deshmukh ❤️

Zoë is a 10-year-old student at Pono. She lives in New York City with her parents and enjoys reading, dancing, climbing, gaming, traveling, and eating her way through NYC’s many neighborhoods. She loves field trips!