Every year each PLP class has one large field school, last year for my year we went to Florida to research imagination, in grade 8 we went to Oregon to create advertisements, and this year we went to California to create a multitude of things, all based around disruption. We spent time in San Diego, San Francisco, and San Jose. In this post I am going to go through every day with a short summary for each day, accompanied by a couple of my best photos from that day.

Day 1- Traveling sucks. There’s no better way to put it. Being crammed into a plane with a couple hundred people for long periods of time sucks, and to get on and off these things, you have to line up for a bunch of things, security, boarding, customs, and more. But, it’s all worth it. We started our day at 4:30 when we met at the airport for our 6am flight. But once we got to our destination: San Diego, it was all good. We went to Torrey Pines National Reserve, the only home of the Torrey Pine, La Jolla Cove, and Coranado Beach. Here are some of the best photos.

Day 2- This day was the Safari Zoo Park. This isn’t a zoo though, the Safari Park is very very focused one rehabilitation. It is a nonprofit organization, with giant enclosures for their animals, Andy they are 100% dedicated to helping animals get back into the wild. Day 2 was extremely scenic, but we also learned a lot about the rehabilitation process of many animals. My highlight was our elephant experience. We got let behind closed doors, and into the elephant enclosure just to watch them feed and train the animals. The public cannot do this, we were invited in because our tour guide knew the elephant trainer, who we just happened to run into. We also got to go on a ballon that gives you a view of the whole park.

Day 3- This was my favorite day in San Diego. We went to the USS Midway Museum. The USS Midway was an aircraft carrier, it was the first carrier built after WWII, and it inspired a whole new class of carriers, called the Midway Class. We spent almost the whole day at the museum, which, by the way, is just the ship. That’s how big it is. These boats really are floating colonies, with over 4,000 crew, 90 planes, and 900 feet. We got to do and see some really awesome things, we got to see the anchors, we saw all the planes, we learned about how they launch and catch planes, but, by favorite was we got to interview a WWII veteran. Ray is one of few still left, it was so cool to meet someone who had lived through so much, and had so much to talk about.

Day 4 and 5- I am combining day 4 and 5 because we went to the same place 2 days in a row, High Tech High (HTH). At HTH we all shadowed a grade 9 student to see how their school is similar or different from our school. I was with a grade 9 student named Nate. The first big similarities between our schools is that we are both on the PBL program (Project Based Learning,) this means that we both learn through the process of learning the material as well as the skills required to create a product, apposed to cramming information before a test or a quiz. I really enjoyed my time here, I learned a lot about how schools like HTH are creating stronger learners, and better people. There are also big differences though. They all stay together by grades, all the kids from each grade have an area where all of their classes are held. Also after the first day we went to the Carrillo National Monument, so we turned it into an opportunity to take a bunch of cool photos. This section I have more photos because I combined two days.

Day 6- This was our first day in San Jose and Silicon Valley. We first went to Google, we technically didn’t have a tour, so we totally legally walked around the Google campus for a bit, took some photots, them made a quick exit. We then had a real tour at Apple, even though it was only in the visitor center, we got to take and walk around with iPhone Xs, and do AR of the Apple Park. But that wasn’t the end, after spending a bit of time at the Intel museum we went bowling  and went to this thing called the Sonic Runway. The Sonics runway is a line of hoops, these hoops have LED lights on them, and they are activated by noise. And, when you have a long lane of lights and tons of energy what do you do? You run. A lot.

Day 7- This day was all about education. Our day was divided into two halves, one half was spent at the Computer History Museum, and the other half at Stanford. Our first tour was through the CHM, and we followed the progression of computers, how they have changed, and how the purpose of them had changed. I think my favorite part of that was seeing pieces of the first ever computer, and I say pieces because they whole one wouldn’t fit in the building. Then we went to Stanford. We had a tour of the whole campus, and let me tell you, that is a beautiful school. Don’t worry mom, I don’t have expectations as high as Stanford. My favorite part of that day though was probably jumping on the track and running a 400m and realizing how I need to start training for track.

(Shoutout to the Olympus Digital Camera)

Day 8- This was our San Francisco adventure day. We started it by actually getting to San Francisco. We took a train, and thenthe BART, and then a bus. Well, by took the bus I mean waited for 2 hours for bus passes, then took the bus. But, once we got there it was awesome, we started the day at the Twitter HQ. It was really cool to see how a social media giant makes an environment to inspire creativity and to show what Twitter is supposed to look like in a physical form, then we went to my special request. We went to Undefeated, a sneaker store. Yeah, I talked the teachers into that. Then, we ended the day at the Golden Gate Bridge. And I saw a race paddle boarder! Those are very rare specimens.

Day 9- Last full day! And, it was one to remember, we went on a Wild SF Tour, a tour that took us all across San Francisco. We learned so much about things like The Summer of Love, the history of Haight and Ashbury, Harvey Milk, and how they’re all connected through the hippy movement, and the gay rights movement. And after that we went to Alcatraz Island. The notorious maximum security prison, that has been converted into a museum. We went on the last tour of the day. That might seem scary, but it really just meant that we got to see a beautiful sunset on a true landmark. I was super interested in how people got out, and they had the cells that they got our of open and on display.

The End- (I’m not including the last day, because we were just on planes,) This post has been cool, but every post like this has a project involved, and that’s true with this one. I made a book. This book is about day by day what we did, and some fun bonus assignments along the way, and a reflection.