[Editor's Note: Progressiveteacher81 is a pseudonym for a second-year elementary school teacher in Manhattan.]
Two years ago, I took my first field trip as a head teacher. Most of what I can recall from the first trip was the bus ride. Getting the children out of the school was a nightmare. I was embarrassed with their hall behavior. I was horrified to have parents bearing witness to my struggles. Amid the general panic, climbing aboard the bus, Gloria, a first-grader, began to sob that she wanted her mom to come and she hadn’t. My first reaction was to look at her in horror (one more piece of drama in my day) and then, noticing that the other adults were looking at her with sympathy and towards me with expectations, I suggested that she sit with me.
Up until then, I didn’t know Gloria, one of the quieter first-graders in a class full of energetic second-graders, very well. Up until then, concerned with whole class management and damage control, I didn’t actually know any of my students. As she sat next to me, her sobs quickly subsided and Gloria and I had a long conversation. For the first time that year, I was doing something I knew how to do successfully – talk to a child and, perhaps equally important, for the first time I was intrigued with something one of my students was saying. Up until then, the kids’ talk mostly just seemed like added noise. For all intents and purposes, the trip passed uneventfully – we were in a contained space (on the Circle Line), there were plenty of parents and other teachers around, and nothing out of the ordinary happened. Yet, except for my conversation with Gloria, the pressure of taking the kids out of school and being watched by others made the day miserable. I went home feeling inadequate and terrible.
In contrast, a trip I took today, at the end of my second year, was almost the complete opposite. It was replete with challenges, but this time I was able to handle each as it confronted me.
The day began with one of the other teachers that I was supposed to go with telling me that she didn’t have any parent volunteers and she couldn’t go. A disappointment, as having more teachers allows some sharing of responsibility.
My morning was rushed. Two parents asked last minute if they could chaperone and I agreed but had to reorganize trip groups I had previously set up. Further, recently, I have tried to make bus time more structured. I spent my prep frantically trying to find an appropriately sized map so the kids could plot their route to the trip – a worksheet that, the night before, I had expected would take me about 5 minutes to put together.
Once back in the classroom, the children, who are usually pretty calm, were frenetic. Having lined them up and found them antsy and unfocused, in front of 5 parents, I firmly announced, “Well, this isn’t happening like this. Everyone go sit silently in the meeting area.” After a lecture on field trip manners, we “tried it again.”
In front of all the parents, announcing the kids’ trip groups, one student pointed out that I had included him twice and omitted another. I apologized profusely. We moved on.
On arriving at the trip destination – this time Grant’s Tomb – I discovered that there were no crosswalks or lights nearby and the only way to cross was to plant myself firmly in the center of Riverside Drive and usher the kids across. I did so calmly, children and parents following as if nothing strange was happening.
As soon as we crossed the street, the parent I had put in charge of the school lunches approached me to say, “Were we going to eat the lunches here because I left them on the bus?”
“Well, yes,” I said, glancing up to see that the bus was already gone. “Okay,” I said, “I guess we’ll just have to call the school. They can get in touch with the bus company and have it bring the lunches back.”
“I can do that,” he said. “Yep,” I replied and let him handle it.
The tour guide announced that he would meet us inside but I could give them a tour of the outside. After a momentary panic – I had studied up on the tomb itself but had had some trouble finding as much information as I would have wanted – I said with a huge smile, “Um, it would really be so nice if you could do the outside tour too.” He conceded.
After a pleasant tour and a long speech about how the “marble you are leaning against was specially imported from Italy and is the same kind used in Michelangelo’s David,” one parent approached me to say, “I think you need to talk to Morissa because she apparently brought a rock into the facility and has engrained Sylvia’s name in the marble.” Shocked and horrified that a year’s worth of work on respecting environments and impulse control clearly had not paid off, I removed Morissa from the group, announced that she would spend the rest of the day outside of the memorial with the father currently tracking down our lunches, miss the next trip, and do community service. I was tempted to keep this our secret, walk away as if there are no scratches, but I mustered up and went to confess to the Park Ranger. He was extremely understanding and, after giving her an appropriate lecture, reassured me that they could get the scratches out.
After a pleasant lunch in the park, we arrived at the buses, hot, tired, needing bathrooms. We were told ours had broken down. “Ok,” I said, 20 kids and 5 parents watching me. For a moment, I considered turning us around and spending half an hour in the park but then I paused and thought – there’s another class with us. I ran to chat with the other teacher and we buddied up with them and got home, crowded but safe.
Incidentally, once again, Gloria, now a second-grader, was my bus partner. This time, there were no tears. She just wanted a chance for us to chat. Halfway home she asked, “Do you like being a teacher?”
“What do you think?” I asked, genuinely intrigued.
She has seen me through my first two years: through moments of grace and moments of shame. She has seen lessons fall flat and lessons take off. She has seen me joyfully laughing at the head of the class and sighing and muttering, “Please, please, just be quiet!”
She did not hesitate, “Yes, I think yes!”
Finding myself calm after the kind of day that would have been my worst nightmare to imagine last year, I concurred, “You’re right,” I said, smiling, “sometimes we have bad days, but yes, I like being a teacher.”
