Learning to Use Public Transit

At Seabury Middle School the community is our classroom. As part of our efforts to create place-based education we strive to get kids out into the community of Tacoma, and being right downtown makes it easy to launch our kids into the city. We have them ask questions, find experts, and take part in projects that affect positive change in the community.

This week we allowed our students to plan a trip around the city of Tacoma and beyond using only public transportation. The students decided what places they wanted to visit, where to eat lunch, and the amount of time they would spend in each place.

Groups huddled around bus books and had to learn how to read the schedules and look at route maps. Some students chose to include multiple forms of mass transit, and some even left the city limits to travel as far as Vashon and Fir Crest.

Once they planned their routes we all went into the city to catch buses from downtown to distant parks and sights. We used a scavenger hunt to encourage them to visit as many different places as time would allow. Teachers went along for the ride, but students had to make decisions and overcome challenges.

What benefits do we expect from this type of activity?

• Students are granted a sense of agency
• They learn how to use a valuable community resource
• It prepares them for future instances when they might need to travel in a small group to go on a field study or to ask an expert in Tacoma questions to further their knowledge

On the day following the trip we used public transit again to visit residents of Franke Toby Jones, a local retirement community and a community partner. We travel there monthly to visit with the elderly residents. This solidified our learning and allows us the flexibility to travel when we have need.