Playing With a Purpose

The preschool buzzed with activity: trees being climbed, basketballs flying, building blocks towering high, toy cars zooming down a grassy hill. 

This excitement was sparked not by preschoolers, but by Trinity University students who visited the University Presbyterian Children’s Center (UPCC) on February 19 as part of the “Child and Adolescent Development Worldwide” course. Taught by Education Professor Laura Allen, Ph.D., this course addresses human growth from birth through emerging adulthood through a global perspective, especially focusing on schooling environments. 

UPCC is an NAEYC-accredited early learning center for infants, toddlers, and preschoolers. The school uses the playgrounds to intentionally promote nature-inspired learning. During their field trip, Trinity students had the chance to explore the outdoor facilities for themselves. 

But the field trip isn’t just a time for students to play. The hands-on experience helps them better understand the material covered in class. 

Allen has taught this course for ten years, and she chose UPCC for the field trip because her two daughters had gone there, so she knew the quality of the school. That, along with its close proximity to campus, made it an ideal place to take her students. 

Even though the course’s schedule is busy, Allen continues to make time for the trip because of the unique opportunity it provides for students to learn more than the surface-level material. 

“One of the things I wanted to do is make sure that, because it's a survey class and we go through so many things, that we have the time to apply some of the stuff and dig a little bit deeper,” Allen says. 

Before taking the trip, Allen’s students had been learning about the impact of preschools on a child’s development, investigating the factors that determine if a preschool is beneficial for a child. 

 Wilson Terry ’29 was impressed by the freedom that was given to the children. 

“They structured the learning around the kids and their sensory experiences,” Terry says. “They focus more on letting the kids be kids and figure things out on their own.”

Terry was just one of the students who enjoyed the trip. Allen says that she always receives a positive response from her class, as they get to engage with the material in a fun and different way while also reinforcing their knowledge. 

Terry walked away from the trip being able to more clearly conceptualize what she had heard in a lecture or read about in a textbook. 

“You can imagine a kid learning how to walk, but it’s different from actually seeing the speed bumps around the playground to teach them proper balance skills,” Terry says. “I think that was really helpful in actually understanding child development and how that looks in a real-world setting.” 

Annie Gray ’29, an English and psychology double major who is also minoring in education, has found Allen’s course particularly impactful. Gray enjoys how the class combines all the elements she is most curious about, blending education and psychology. 

“I'm fascinated by the way that minds work and develop, and I hope that a foundation in psychology will make me a better educator because of my understanding of how a child's mind works and how children learn new information,” Gray says.

The class has been helpful even for students not minoring in education. Terry, a political science and psychology double major, plans to go to law school specifically for family law and thinks the course will give her a more well-rounded perspective when addressing custody cases. 

“People focus so much more on what the parents are going through, like who's getting the kids, who's getting the house, who's getting the money,” Terry says. “I feel like we don't focus as much on how this is going to affect the child’s development. So I wanted to take this class so that I could have a better understanding of all the parties involved.” 

“Child and Adolescent Development Worldwide” isn’t Allen’s only course that expands learning beyond the classroom. She also co-teaches a class called “The Natural Environment and Well-Being” with Courtney Crim,’93, M’94, Ed.D., which exposes students to the benefits of spending time in nature. Offered every fall, the class takes field trips every other week to parks and forests, as well as to nature-based educational settings such as the Will Smith Zoo School. 

Field trips like these and to the preschool offer students the chance to learn in a new environment, as well as engage with the community outside of Trinity. 

“I think it's really easy to forget that for the next couple of years we're living in San Antonio, not just at Trinity,” Gray says. “The ‘Trinity bubble,’ as people call it, truly exists, but getting chances like these to explore places off campus helps to remind us, or at least me, that San Antonio is broader than just on campus.”