When planning the field trip for 110+ students to visit Bayer, I would have never predicted that a student would fall so much in love with the company itself. As we were loading buses to leave a co-worker pulled me aside to jokingly warn me that one of her students was ready to bombard me with questions about how he could get a job at Bayer when grew up because he wanted one. This teacher was unaware that said student had already presented me with  a masterpiece he had created on scrap paper: he had added a heart to enclose the Bayer logo we are all familiar with.

While this post is delayed, I’m glad that I have a chance to capture the excitement from our field trip that took place last Friday. What was special about the student mentioned above is that while this student was not particularly at-risk, he was also a difficult student to authentically engage in learning. More exciting than a light bulb moment, is when a light-bulb moment appears and we least expect it. My co-worker was really surprised by his reaction to the trip because she said that he has rarely shown that level of engagement in anything they have learned about this year in her classroom.

I’ve always been concerned that I was not doing enough to make my fellowship experience accessible to students beyond my classroom. After completing this field trip, I see this as an opportunity that we can continue to collaborate with Bayer on in the future so that future fifth grade students at our school have this experience.

Will the student mentioned above become an employee of Bayer? Who knows? What I do know is that he will never forget how he felt at the end of that trip when he spent an entire day seeing what it could be like to be employed as a scientist somewhere one day.