Discovery classes mobilize thousands of teachers from primary and secondary education each year, but the preparation for these trips remains a blind spot in professional training. The guides available online detail the logistics, administrative permissions, and the choice of a lodging center. However, one step is rarely covered: how does a teacher acquire the specific skills to design, supervise, and pedagogically exploit a discovery class.
Hybrid training in academies: a format on the rise since 2023
The continuing education catalogs of several academies (Lyon, Bordeaux) have included dedicated modules for school trips with overnight stays since 2023-2024. These trainings adopt a hybrid format combining remote and in-person, a notable evolution compared to the exclusively in-person workshops that previously dominated.
The remote part generally covers the regulatory framework, the writing of the educational project, and the management of permissions. The in-person sessions focus on practical situations: leading nature workshops, managing groups in outdoor settings, coordinating with the staff of an accredited center.
This rise of hybrid formats in academic plans responds to a practical constraint. A teacher preparing a discovery class for spring cannot take three days off in January. The possibility of following part of the course remotely, at their own pace, facilitates access to these programs.
Field feedback varies on this point: some teachers feel that the remote part lacks interactivity, while others find it sufficient for the administrative aspect. You will find a comprehensive overview by consulting the training on partir-en-classe.org which references several of these structured courses.
Modules on students with special educational needs: a still recent angle
Since 2022-2023, federations of organizers such as the PEP and certain popular education movements have contributed to the addition of specific modules in academic training. The goal: to prepare teachers to adapt activities for students with disabilities or with DYS disorders.
These modules address concrete points that classic organizational guides do not cover:
- Adapting rhythms and physical activities in natural environments for students with reduced mobility or attention disorders
- Coordinating with medical teams around individualized reception protocols (PAI), especially for overnight stays away from usual care facilities
- The psychological preparation of the affected students and their peers, to ensure that inclusion does not limit itself to physical presence without real participation in learning
This aspect represents a change in perspective. Training no longer focuses solely on logistics or the educational content of the trip. It integrates the inclusive dimension, which implies skills that initial training in INSPE does not systematically cover.
Educational project and training: what academic catalogs really expect
A common misunderstanding is to equate the preparation of a discovery class with the writing of an administrative file. The most advanced trainings clearly distinguish the two levels.
The first level, administrative, concerns permissions for outings, the regulatory supervision ratio, the choice of an accredited center, and communication with families. This aspect is well documented online and does not, on its own, justify a structured training.
The second level, pedagogical, is where the training provides a value that written guides cannot replace. It involves building a project that links the learning of the school curriculum with the activities of the trip, and then planning a reinvestment in the classroom upon return.
A nature trip in cycle 3, for example, does not yield the same learning outcomes depending on whether it is designed as a recreational break or as a scientific observation field related to the science and technology curriculum.
Recent hybrid trainings emphasize this linkage. They offer design grids that require the teacher to specify, for each planned activity, the connection to a competency from the common core. This formalization work, often done in a collective workshop during the in-person phase, constitutes the core of the training.
Limitations of current training systems for discovery classes
The multiplication of modules does not guarantee their accessibility. Several barriers persist.
The first relates to the calendar. Academic training plans publish their catalog at the beginning of the school year, but sessions dedicated to overnight trips are sometimes scheduled after the period when teachers should have finalized their project. A delay that reduces the practical usefulness of the system.
The second barrier concerns the disparity between academies. Not all academies offer a module dedicated to discovery classes. Teachers in less well-equipped academies often find themselves searching for resources on their own, often from federations or private organizers whose training content is not always validated by the institution.
- Absence of a unified national framework for training on school trips with overnight stays
- Low visibility of existing modules in academic catalogs, sometimes drowned among hundreds of offers
- Lack of post-training follow-up to measure the real impact on the quality of organized trips
No national evaluation published at this stage measures whether teachers trained through these hybrid systems organize trips of better pedagogical quality than those who train autonomously. This lack of data prevents objective comparisons of training formats.
For a teacher preparing their first discovery class, the most reliable reflex remains to check their academy’s catalog at the start of the school year, and then to cross-reference these resources with feedback from colleagues who have already organized a comparable trip.