Students enrolled in Spanish 3 with Mrs. Sanchez and Spanish 4 with Dr. Galve had the opportunity to travel to Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri to learn about the importance of creativity and innovation. On September 11, students had to arrive at the main entrance of the school at 7:50 in the morning to catch the bus at 8 and arrive at the campus around 8:30 in the morning.

The importance of the trip to Westminster College is about creativity and innovation. Karina Galve who is the Spanish 4 teacher who set up this field trip said, “The importance of this trip is that students can learn something that could impact students and that they can discuss about it and learn about different things, in which in this case it is creativity and innovation.”

Galve also commented about how these field trips to Westminster teach students variety of things, “Students learn several things, but it depends on the student, they talk to people who are  specialist in that area, for this year they learned about creativity and innovation and they have an opportunity to choose a session that interest them and learn a variety of things, and ask questions, participate in smaller group activities to better understand why it is important.”

After the plenary session, students had the option to choose one of the two following executive sessions which both talked about different ways of creativity and innovation. Dakota Salem, sophomore and Spanish 4 student, went to the session on “Giving the gift: Applying improvisation to healthcare simulation” and learned several things.

“I learned how physicians and health care providers can better themselves with training within their medical career. Also, making ways for healthcare providers and patients working with each other to better understand and know their diagnosis,” said Salem.

Kiyah Woods, sophomore and a Spanish 4 student, went to the different executive session called the “Community in creativity: Dance as a unifying art form.” Woods said, “I have done dance for years and for me just to see other people especially an african american female do things like that, it literally inspires me because one day I can be like that and influence other people to dance.”

Woods also commented about how this relates to the topic of the trip, “It relates to the topic by creativity is not just by art, technology, designing, programing, it goes a long way with dance, it can tell a story that is used through movement and not through words.”

After the executive sessions, students had the opportunity to explore the college and see how it feels like. “Students should have the opportunity to explore the campus and what the life is like in college,” said Galve.

Emma Schudel, sophomore and a Spanish 4 student, enjoyed exploring the campus and see the things that Westminster had. “My favorite part of the trip to Westminster was walking around campus and visiting the national churchill museum,” said Schudel.

Schudel learned several things when she visited the museum and learned about Winston Churchill and who he was. Schudel said, “I learned about Winston Churchill and him being involved in world war 2 and it was really interesting.”

A lot of students learned several things and understood why creativity and innovation was important, such as Sarah Duff, sophomore and Spanish 3 student, “It is important because a lot of people who want to go into more an artistic career path and they are told that it’s not practical and I learned that there are careers that people can go to that can be artistic,” said Duff.

Galve explained why the trip was important, “This is important because people nowadays don’t express their feelings. If there’s no creativity, there is no innovation, so how are we going to have people who invent new things. In other words it gives students a new idea and begin to think about things that they don’t do or we don’t do because we don’t have time.”

People who are creative don’t have time to do the things they do, due to how busy they are in their daily schedule and they should take time to do the things they love to do. And people who don’t think they have creativity in them, are not uncreative because people are creative someway. This trip to Westminster allowed students to find their inner creativity and broaden their knowledge on interesting and unusual things.