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Mr. Bussey and Mr. Berthelon take students to visit Forest City Gear, Collin’s Aerospace, and Ingersoll Machine Tool. Photo courtesy of the Communications Staff for the School District of Belleville
In the world of horse showing, there is an expression – there is no faster way to train a horse to be in the show ring, than to take the horse to a horse show and put it in the show ring! There the horse learns a lot – the routine of a competitive show, expectations and on-the-job knowledge for the next time. For students, field trips can act in a similar way. How else would one know what they want to study if they don’t first know a little about it?
High school teachers Mr. Bussey and Mr. Berthelon believe in the power of field trips and so they recently arranged for engineering-minded students to see opportunities in the manufacturing industry. They recently took their students to three sites in Rockford, IL. At Forest City Gear, students saw the manufacturing of high precision gears and other parts that are used in the aerospace industry, like in the Mars Rovers. At Collin’s Aerospace, participants got to see the assembly of emergency power generators that are in most aircrafts across the world, as well as their state-of-the art wind tunnel. Finally, at Ingersoll Machine Tool they got to see the beginning stages of the construction of the Giant Magellan Telescope. The students who attended were Violet Swenson, Evelyn Thao, Reece Frydenlund, Tillie Heitz, Ethan Kirtz, Ari Mehta, Adrian Jenkins, and Dane Schwersenska.
Mr. Bussey was elated to get the chance for Belleville High School students to get inside these sites and see the future of engineering! He was rewarded for his efforts with eager minds and a rejuvenated sense of excitement from his students.
Bussey notes, “I was very proud of the students for taking their Monday off to come and explore world class manufacturing and engineering projects with us in Rockford. A few of the students were able to reconnect after the field trip with some of the research scientists at Ingersoll Machine tools to be able to come down for a second visit and use the world’s largest research printer 3-D printer, to 3-D print a life size Belleville Wildcat to bring back to Belleville. I feel like the field trip was a tremendous success.”
For Mr. Berthelon, the impact on his Project Lead the Way (PLTW) students was a big one.
“They had a valuable opportunity to see real world application of the skills we have been working on in class, as well as see some of the possibilities that are in store for them after graduation,” says Berthelon.
Field trips offer students a powerful opportunity to experience something so profound, it engages their minds to come back into the classroom with a new lens and sense of direction. After going on a field trip like this one to Rockford, IL, Belleville students have new inquisitive insight to better understand how what they might be tackling in the classroom can be applied to their futures in places like Forest City Gear, Collin’s Aerospace and Ingersoll Machine Tool. Belleville’s engineering-minded students are lucky to have two educators like Mr. Bussey and Mr. Berthelon who possess the grit and ingenuity to make experiences outside the classroom possible to help grow their minds!