by: Arshia Rampuria

On the first week of September, more notably on the fifth week of school, IA hosted a field trip for the freshmen to go to the zoo, paired with a design thinking activity we did later in the day. 

Check out a video of the trip here and learn more about the biologically-inspired habitats students created!

It’s late on another Friday night, and I’m back to contemplate today’s field trip. Yes, you heard it right. A field trip. Funny thing, I did bring a journal to jot down a couple of side notes here and there. And now that I’m back, I cannot for the life of me find out where I kept it. So, we’re back to old fashioned memory. And with that, I’ll start off my recollection of the field trip. 

Starting Off 

The day started off normal. I carpooled with my friends to my home school and rode the bus for around 30 minutes until we reached Innovation. We then got out of our respective buses, walked in from the back of the school to the ongoing stream of bright music in the cafeteria, and accomplished whatever we had to do before 8:55 AM. 

Around that time, we heard an announcement from the intercom telling us to go back to the bus lot. When I reached there, all the freshmen were clumped into one big row of people on the sidewalk. We all sorted into our groups, mine with Ms. Restler and Taha in #4, along with one of my friends from my first period. A few minutes later, we all filed in line in those groups, entered the bus, took attendance, and then started the ride. 

Entrance 

At around 9:40 AM, we reached the park. All of us clammed out of the bus, filling up the entrance in the iconic light blue Innovation Academy shirts. I went with two friends, one from my group and one from another. We all started walking through the zoo, picking up a map later from a teacher.  

There’s a different vibe you get from the zoo, almost as if you were in the wilderness and in a reservation. The air you breathe is fresh, and it’s almost as if you’re in an outdoor museum or hiking trail.  As for activities, we spent the most time taking pictures and videos of the animals in the 2 ½ hours we spent there. There were four main habitats (subcategories) of the animals at the zoo, highlighted in the map: the Asian forest, the Orkin’s Children’s Zoo, the Ford African Rainforest, and the African Savannah. There was a noticeable difference in the way they segregated the animals, some with tall fences, others with glass enclosures. As for size, I’d say that the zoo wasn’t too big or small; we were able to cover most of it through the time we had. 

The Exhibitions 

I eventually met my friends again while walking around the rhinos in the middle of the African Savanna area. It was at that point when we were passing through some of the bigger animals of the zoo. All the rhinos, the elephants, the giraffes, and the zebras were placed in larger settlements. As we walked back through the zoo, I remember noticing that the orangutans had an entire area towards the back of the viewing deck and stayed relatively far from us. The lemurs also had a structure made with ropes and with separating floors, which they often used throughout the day.  

The animals had settlements made to supply their own needs of shelter in the zoo. But I do wonder, especially with the established boundaries, how often they get outside of those boundaries, and how much space they would use in a regular day out in the wilderness. If a larger animal, such as a rhino or a giraffe, gets more space than those smaller than it, then a human should theoretically be encased in something even smaller than the fields they use now. And if a human cannot be encased in an area smaller than the fields used for the giraffes and rhinos, then how do the giraffes and rhinos adapt to their restricted environments? 

Red Pandas 

The last part of the trip was probably finding the red panda in a part of the Asian Forest we hadn’t look in before. We found one of them asleep on the branches of a tree which seemed to have a house hanging off it. According to one of the zookeepers, she was two years old. 

Conclusion 

Before long, we all made our way back to the exit. Through and through, the two and a half hour trip was exciting in its own ways and showed a lot through the exhibits and animals they held within the shelters. All that was left was to have lunch and to wait for the Design Thinking Activity starting at around two. Stay tuned next week for the results of that DT Sprint!