About the Author
Trent Van Leuven is an agriculture and natural resources teacher in the beautiful Big Lost River Valley in Idaho. He preps for seven different classes each day and helps students manage three greenhouses, a welding lab, a fish lab, and a new ag diesel repair and maintenance facility with an animal science lab. An occasional bus driver and fulltime problem solver, he believes that place-based education is as much about people as it is about locale.
Named Idaho’s 2024 Teacher of the Year, he’s spent the last 16 years turning field trips into life-changing experiences—covering over 50,000 miles through 32 states with students who learned that the world is wider than the map. He grew up on a small dairy farm in Roberts, Idaho, where he learned that just about everything has a solution—and that manure, like most hard work, has a way of teaching lessons you don’t forget. He enjoys roughhousing with his four children on the trampoline and hiking to mountain lakes and streams in pursuit of fish and enlightenment.
This is his first book.
In Defense of Experiential Learning
Field trips provide multiple senses to learn content.
Field trips open up the school to the community, and in turn, the community to the school.
Field trips let students know that education exists outside of the school building.
Field trips help students find future opportunities and hobbies that await them in the world.
