I'd like to say that I experienced no bumps, hitches, or calamities in planning and going on my first field trip as a teacher. I'd also like to say my job is easy, but merely entertaining the idea that those two words are comparable–teaching and easy–makes me laugh and cry and wish that everyone who's never done it could spend a week teaching (and I'd especially like to see my students give it a try).
However, planning my first field trip (reserving it with the museum, distributing permission forms, and readjusting the school lunch schedule so we could eat when we got back) was so easy. This should have been an unmistakable red flag that the scales would balance–that the hard was coming.
The day before the trip, after we had many permission forms returned with parent signatures, I learned that we'd given the students the wrong form. This was bad, and not necessarily my bad, but bad nonetheless, because we had to give out new forms and accept them the next morning, the day of the trip.
And that morning, the shitshow began.
"Mister, mister, mister, MISTER, mister, mister, mister, mister, mister, mister, mister, TAKE MY FORM." That's the sound of being barraged by schoolchildren with high-pitched whinnies and folded permission slips.
No big deal, I naively thought.
I held onto the forms like a child clings to her ticket into the amusement park. Then the other teachers gave me more forms to clutch. Then the slower-on-the-uptake students handed me even more forms. Then I put all these God-forsaken forms in one disgusting pile in my room.
I looked at the clock. Forty-five minutes until departure, meaning forty-five minutes to figure out who had turned in the correct form and who had turned in the old, incorrect version.
My first words to my class were not panicked but urgent. "I need four responsible students to help me right now. S., W., A., and...L.? Good enough. Move it people."
Now, with a pile of about 100 forms old and new, I gave the three responsible students and the one irresponsible student simple directions. "Write down all the names of kids with the correct form in one column, and all the ones with incorrect forms in another."
They performed admirably, sensing the urgency in my voice and out of their own desire to get the hell out of school, a desire that we shared (but one that, I later learned, was misguided on my part).
I'll do my best to explain what happened next as coherently as possible, but the reality was so disorienting that recreation may be difficult.
The students who turned in the incorrect form needed to call parents and get verbal permission. Those students were scattered about the building. So I assigned runners in my room to go to each of the classrooms with constantly updating lists of who needed to call Mom and Dad.
Then I started typing up a master list. This was difficult, as the hubbub in my room grew as departure neared.
A: Mister, mister, mister, I just called my Mom. She said I can go–come talk to her.
J, J, J, J, J, J–pretty much all the J-named students and then some: Here's my form. Sorry I'm twenty minutes late to school and fucking with your already fucked system of organizing this shitshow.*
(*That sentence was implied if not spoken.)
K: Mister, my Mom wants to talk to you.
Mr. K.: I know Angie turned in a form, but I can't find it.
Male student: Mosquito bites here, mosquito bites there, mosquito bites everywhere.
My self-proclaimed responsible student, L: Hey, other responsible students, let's get this ****ing **** done! **** my ***** *** ****-licking *****
My consciousness: Fuck it all to hell.
As time ticked away, the pressure built to finish. So after all my runners seemed to return (but who could really know as I hadn't taken attendance), I printed off ten copies of what I thought was a final version of the List of students going.
This is where it gets bad, er, worse. All the teachers had their groups and were walking down to the atrium. In total, we probably had sixty students going. In the atrium, with the hum building of excited schoolchildren about to go on a field trip, a woman from the office hurried over to me.
However, planning my first field trip (reserving it with the museum, distributing permission forms, and readjusting the school lunch schedule so we could eat when we got back) was so easy. This should have been an unmistakable red flag that the scales would balance–that the hard was coming.
The day before the trip, after we had many permission forms returned with parent signatures, I learned that we'd given the students the wrong form. This was bad, and not necessarily my bad, but bad nonetheless, because we had to give out new forms and accept them the next morning, the day of the trip.
And that morning, the shitshow began.
"Mister, mister, mister, MISTER, mister, mister, mister, mister, mister, mister, mister, TAKE MY FORM." That's the sound of being barraged by schoolchildren with high-pitched whinnies and folded permission slips.
No big deal, I naively thought.
I held onto the forms like a child clings to her ticket into the amusement park. Then the other teachers gave me more forms to clutch. Then the slower-on-the-uptake students handed me even more forms. Then I put all these God-forsaken forms in one disgusting pile in my room.
I looked at the clock. Forty-five minutes until departure, meaning forty-five minutes to figure out who had turned in the correct form and who had turned in the old, incorrect version.
My first words to my class were not panicked but urgent. "I need four responsible students to help me right now. S., W., A., and...L.? Good enough. Move it people."
Now, with a pile of about 100 forms old and new, I gave the three responsible students and the one irresponsible student simple directions. "Write down all the names of kids with the correct form in one column, and all the ones with incorrect forms in another."
They performed admirably, sensing the urgency in my voice and out of their own desire to get the hell out of school, a desire that we shared (but one that, I later learned, was misguided on my part).
I'll do my best to explain what happened next as coherently as possible, but the reality was so disorienting that recreation may be difficult.
The students who turned in the incorrect form needed to call parents and get verbal permission. Those students were scattered about the building. So I assigned runners in my room to go to each of the classrooms with constantly updating lists of who needed to call Mom and Dad.
Then I started typing up a master list. This was difficult, as the hubbub in my room grew as departure neared.
A: Mister, mister, mister, I just called my Mom. She said I can go–come talk to her.
J, J, J, J, J, J–pretty much all the J-named students and then some: Here's my form. Sorry I'm twenty minutes late to school and fucking with your already fucked system of organizing this shitshow.*
(*That sentence was implied if not spoken.)
K: Mister, my Mom wants to talk to you.
Mr. K.: I know Angie turned in a form, but I can't find it.
Male student: Mosquito bites here, mosquito bites there, mosquito bites everywhere.
My self-proclaimed responsible student, L: Hey, other responsible students, let's get this ****ing **** done! **** my ***** *** ****-licking *****
My consciousness: Fuck it all to hell.
As time ticked away, the pressure built to finish. So after all my runners seemed to return (but who could really know as I hadn't taken attendance), I printed off ten copies of what I thought was a final version of the List of students going.
This is where it gets bad, er, worse. All the teachers had their groups and were walking down to the atrium. In total, we probably had sixty students going. In the atrium, with the hum building of excited schoolchildren about to go on a field trip, a woman from the office hurried over to me.
"Londberg, this List doesn't have last names. We can't find the kids' medical information without last names. And we have to know in case someone has an asthma attack or something." At that precise moment, countless little hands started poking, probing, and patting me on all points of my upper extremities. And their furious little voices said, "MISTER, I'M NOT ON THIS LIST BUT I TURNED IN MY FORM!" And then another teacher said, "We gotta get on that bus or it's going to leave without us." And then the lady from the office again, "Do you even have the medical bag?" |
This was the pinnacle of everything overwhelming. With sixty students, a handful of teachers, and nurses and secretaries in the office all waiting for me to figure the shitshow out, my mind flat-lined, my resolve disintegrated, and my soul merged with Benny the Hobo's (pictured).
Later, after I had regained composure, we were on the bus heading to the museum. (Now I hate to gloss over how we managed to get from the atrium to the bus, but details of those five derailing minutes would likely reveal a number of Teacher Laws that I broke, both knowingly and inadvertently, so I'm afraid I can't go into gory detail.)
On the bus ride, we wrote a new List of every student on the bus. Needless to say, this new List was incredibly important, as we'd need it to ensure we had all students back on the bus for the return trip home.
We arrived at the museum and bustled in. We'd been inside for five minutes when I realized I lost the List. I lost the List with every student on the field trip. At the same time as this sickening realization struck me, a wrinkly museum curator asked me if the sixty students crammed into that tiny lobby could get 'quiet'. I think I laughed at her, and I felt Benny's soul inside me, squirming with delight.
The next thing I remember was being in a quiet room of the museum with my group of students accompanied by a sweet tour guide. The universe seemed to have momentarily righted itself, and then I received a text from another teacher: "Do you have [male student] with you?" I told her no, and then I got another text: "How about [female student]? I lost them."
Sweet nectarine. I was so used to panic at this point that I hardly noticed Benny as he flooded my system. I thought that I was sure to be fired. I thought somebody was going to have an asthma attack and those missing students were running around the streets of Hartford with stolen paintings and kids had gotten on the bus without signed forms and on the trip home we were going to forget kids in the museum since I'd lost the List.
But by some stroke of mercy, none of that happened. The List was found (another teacher had it), the two students were found (playing in the museum fountain, naked...just kidding). And I still have my job, although now I may have to worry about this blog causing some reprimands.
Fuck it all to hell though. It's break and I'm not concerned about a damn thing.
Later, after I had regained composure, we were on the bus heading to the museum. (Now I hate to gloss over how we managed to get from the atrium to the bus, but details of those five derailing minutes would likely reveal a number of Teacher Laws that I broke, both knowingly and inadvertently, so I'm afraid I can't go into gory detail.)
On the bus ride, we wrote a new List of every student on the bus. Needless to say, this new List was incredibly important, as we'd need it to ensure we had all students back on the bus for the return trip home.
We arrived at the museum and bustled in. We'd been inside for five minutes when I realized I lost the List. I lost the List with every student on the field trip. At the same time as this sickening realization struck me, a wrinkly museum curator asked me if the sixty students crammed into that tiny lobby could get 'quiet'. I think I laughed at her, and I felt Benny's soul inside me, squirming with delight.
The next thing I remember was being in a quiet room of the museum with my group of students accompanied by a sweet tour guide. The universe seemed to have momentarily righted itself, and then I received a text from another teacher: "Do you have [male student] with you?" I told her no, and then I got another text: "How about [female student]? I lost them."
Sweet nectarine. I was so used to panic at this point that I hardly noticed Benny as he flooded my system. I thought that I was sure to be fired. I thought somebody was going to have an asthma attack and those missing students were running around the streets of Hartford with stolen paintings and kids had gotten on the bus without signed forms and on the trip home we were going to forget kids in the museum since I'd lost the List.
But by some stroke of mercy, none of that happened. The List was found (another teacher had it), the two students were found (playing in the museum fountain, naked...just kidding). And I still have my job, although now I may have to worry about this blog causing some reprimands.
Fuck it all to hell though. It's break and I'm not concerned about a damn thing.