Programs

Field Trips

826LA invites classes to participate in free, writing-based field trips. Our field trips offer a fun, safe, collaborative experience for students to express their imaginations and practice their writing skills. Supported by our volunteers, students brainstorm and write original stories or memoir pieces, and will receive their writing in the form of a bound book by the end of the field trip.

Interested in bringing your class on a field trip?
Fill out our application here!

 


 

Field Trips We Offer

Storytelling & Bookmaking (Grades 1–4)

Students will visit Barnacle and Barnacle Publishers where they will meet the famous Professor Barnacle, the wacky illusive publishing house boss. Students will then collaborate with trained volunteers and each other to produce a story with original characters, setting, and plot to impress the Professor. Students will write their own ending to the collaborative story and leave the publishing house with an illustrated and bound copy of their complete story.

Well-Wishing & Poetry Writing (Gr 3–5)

On a visit to Barnacle and Barnacle Publishers students will learn poetic techniques like personification and sensory details in order to write poetry that has the power to cure Professor Barnacle’s pet of the bad day blues. Students will work in small groups with our volunteers to write two collaborative poems as well as one individual poem. At the end of the Field Trip, each student will leave as published poets, taking home their own poetry collection.

Choose Your Own Adventure (Grades 5–8)

Students will begin writing a Choose Your Own Adventure story as a group, but stop when the second-person protagonist has a decision to make. At that point, the group will split into two to write each branch of the story. As more decisions present themselves and storylines continue to branch, the groups will continue to split into smaller groups. Each student will end the adventure by finishing the unresolved story branches with their own endings. By the end of the field trip, students will have written an 11-page adventure with six different endings, and every student will take home their own version of the adventure.

Memoir (Grades 9–12)

Students will reflect on their lives and unpack important moments, events, and memories that have shaped their identities. With the help of volunteers and focused small group work, students will work on written reflections of their lives in this current moment. This field trip can be used as a tool for students as they prepare to write their personal narratives for college application essays.

 

 

 


Check Out Our Barnacle and Barnacle Library

Storytelling & Bookmaking


Small Group Storytelling

 


 

Ready to Schedule a Field Trip for Your Class?

Click here to schedule your Field Trip today!

 


 

Questions or Concerns?

Contact our Field Trips program staff
by email at fieldtrips@826la.org or phone at (323) 389-7234

 


More Information About 826LA’s Field Trips Program

Location
Field Trips take place out of our Mar Vista location at 12515 Venice Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90066 and our Echo Park location at 1714 Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90026.

Schedule
We offer field trips September through May on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday mornings from 10am to 1pm.

Priority policy
We prioritize schools in LAUSD that have a Title I percentage of 50% or higher. You can see if your school qualifies here.

In partnership, we ask all other applicants to pay $450 per field trip, which covers the cost of our transportation scholarship. However, in the event that this causes undue financial hardship, we ask for a donation on a sliding scale with a minimum of $250 per field trip. We currently do not offer field trips to private schools or homeschool classes. If we are unable to schedule you, we will be in touch about adding you to our waitlist. In the event of a cancellation, we may contact classes on the waitlist and the available date(s) may be offered on a first-come, first-served basis.

Class Sizes
We can accommodate a minimum of 15 and a maximum of 30 students per field trip. If your group is larger than 30 students, you will need to select multiple dates in order for us to accommodate your entire group.

Transportation Support
For the 2023-2024 school year, we are offering two forms of support for classes that are unable to visit our centers due to restricted transportation funding – our Transportation Scholarship and our Traveling Field Trips Program. Please see descriptions of these programs below. You can apply for them within the Field Trips application.

To qualify, your class must not be able to attend a field trip at our centers due to limited transportation funding and/or an inability to reach our sites via other means (i.e. walking, public transportation within reason, parent carpool, etc.) Your school must also be a minimum of three miles away from our centers. Priority will be given to schools whose student population is a majority Black/African American.

Transportation Scholarship
We are awarding a limited number of monetary scholarships to classes that have limited transportation funding to visit our site. Each award is up to $450.

Traveling Field Trips
Instead of your class coming to our site for a Field Trip, our 826LA staff will come to your school and facilitate a modified 90-minute field trip experience in your classroom. We are able to work with two classes in one day, each for a separate 90 minute period. After the field trip, we will return to your school within 10 days to deliver the bound books. This is only available for Storytelling & Bookmaking field trips.

 

Additional Questions
For additional questions, please reach out to one of our Field Trips program staff at fieldtrips@826la.org.

 


What Volunteers Do in Field Trips

Volunteers are an important part of 826LA Field Trips. Volunteers facilitate brainstorming sessions and share-outs, type up student ideas, and support the editing process. They also assist 826LA staff during book production. We ask our volunteers to be adaptable, engaged, and enthusiastic throughout our field trips.

For our most popular field trip, Storytelling & Bookmaking, volunteers make up the team of Barnacle & Barnacle Publishers, and can take up a variety of roles, ranging from the Brainstormer (who helps students come up with and share their best ideas) to the Typist (who transcribes those ideas into writing) to the Illustrator (who brings those ideas to life with drawings). Volunteers may even play the role of our publisher Professor Barnacle, or lead the field trip as our Storyteller. 

Please read our FAQ for Volunteers for more information, or reach out to one of our Volunteer program staff at volunteerteam@826la.org.

 


“[The most effective part of the program was] the volunteers facilitating the small group writing through questioning. The process was fun and creative! It shows the students that writing can be fun. I also love that the students return home with a meaningful artifact that can be a school memory. Students don’t get to make things as much these days, so these books are special.”

Jeremy Munson, 4th-grade teacher, Stoner Avenue Elementary School