A few weeks ago, I got an email from Heidi, suggesting that I play hooky from work and come chaperone a field trip with her for a slew of high school students. I was shocked (shocked!) that she suggest such a thing... but then I thought, what the hell? I tend to hoard my PTO days, thinking I will need them for some greater purpose. Then by the time June rolls around, I have a million days that I have to use or lose by the end of the month (we can't carry them over). I have plenty of days, and we are about to kick into high gear for opening next week anyway, so I figured a day off would be nice. So I agreed to join her and some other Niles North teachers at the Field Museum with the AP Biology kids.
Today was the day. I remember going on field trips when I was a kid. We'd sing (loudly) those old chestnuts like "WHO stole the cookie from the cookie jar." Our chaperones yelled at us to be quiet and in some cases to "listen for sirens." I have no idea why. That's just what he said. These kids, juniors and seniors were so quiet I thought they were all asleep. We visited the Evolving Earth exhibit and the kids had a packet to complete. Honestly, I think that's the only way people actually read all the stuff in those exhibits. I usually wander through, read the highlights, admire the fossils or whatever and off I go. I learned a lot today, actually - I was looking at the packet, wondering what they had to complete. I took 3 years of science, and none of them included AP biology. The last time I had biology was sophomore year. A LONG time ago. So thank goodness they didn't ask ME anything. All we had to do was, you know, watch them. The museum has a rule that there has to be one chaperone for every 10 kids. There were six chaperones in our group, for about 60 students. They were good kids on the whole - we herded them downstairs to McDonald's for lunch, herded them back upstairs and only lost 3 in our count at the buses. Don't worry! We found them! All of the kids had their phones, of course, and they went to work calling the missing ones and they magically appeared at the buses.
All in all, it was an interesting experience.
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