After an initial trial of its educational field trip contest in 2022-2023, the Western Development Museum (WDM) held the contest a second time during the 2023-2024 academic year with the winner announced Jan. 8.
The winner of this year’s field trip contest is Wendy Besser, a Grade 2 teacher in Waldheim, Sask.
“She was just thrilled to have been drawn. (She was) very excited about that,” said Karla Rasmussen, the program manager for the WDM’s four locations in the province.
The winner can choose between any of the WDM’s four branches including Moose Jaw, and Besser has indicated her intent to visit the Saskatoon branch located 54 kilometres south of Waldheim.
Several entries were received from Moose Jaw this year. Rasmussen said that out of around 300 total entries, approximately 30 came from the Notorious City. This is an increase from 2022-2023 and demonstrates a growing trend of interest in Moose Jaw, Yorkton, and North Battleford. Saskatoon remains the most popular branch of the WDM.
“It was nice to see that a lot of these entries were from rural areas and outside of our museum location communities too,” Rasmussen added.
The contest was initiated after the museum wanted to connect with more educators and encourage them to sign up for the museum’s e-newsletter, which lists upcoming educational programs at the WDM.
The program is offered to schools and home-school groups and provides up to 35 students with either an in-person visit to a WDM school program or a general visit to a location of their choice. To help with transportation, a reimbursement of up to $200 is offered.
The contest helps the museum build a relationship with educators, and feedback provided on the comments section at the back of each contest entry form helps the museum improve its programming.
“A couple people said they visited… as students when they were growing up. Now that they are teachers and educators themselves, they would like to bring their own classes,” Rasmussen said. Some guests noted they may not have been able to visit the museum otherwise.
Several comments mentioned a desire for a stronger connection to school curriculum, such as through social studies classes, and Rasmussen said the museum is striving to strengthen and grow this connection.
One of the primary goals of the contest is to promote the museums e-newsletter.
“Our e-newsletter is something that we’re building, and right now it goes up once or twice a month. We try to feature a few different things (including) some of our virtual programs and some of our in-person programs from around (the) four (WDM) locations.”
Rasmussen said the digital newsletter has been a good way to network with educators, and out of the nearly 300 entries from this year’s contest, around 200 entrants also signed up for the e-newsletter. This more than doubled the number of e-newsletter signups compared to the previous year.
“Thank you to everyone locally in Moose Jaw that shared this information about the contest,” she said.
Rasmussen also wanted to acknowledge and thank the WDM’s programming and education staff at each location who she said did a good job in sharing information about the contest with their contacts in the educational world.
Due to the success of this year’s program, Rasmussen said it will likely continue for 2024-2025.
For more information about educational programming at the WDM, visit the museum’s website at wdm.ca. Educators can find additional resources including a sign-up form for the e-newsletter under “For Teachers” and then under “Learn” on the top website menu.
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