24 January 2013

Buses, chips, movies, and special cupcakes

Yesterday we were to take a group of middle schoolers on a field trip to visit a college in Queens.  Everything was ready - forms turned in, five dollars collected from each student, students who did not have forms or money already sent to a teacher's room to do school work that each teacher left for them to complete.

Perfect.  We were all posted up in the auditorium by 8:40.  The buses were to leave at 9:30.

We waited and waited and waited until about 9:20 and then the head of the field trip went to make a call to the bus company to be sure they were on the way.

There is a bus strike in NYC right now.

Until 9:25, we did not realize that the private drivers were acting as scabs for some of the school buses and would not be able to drive us on the chartered bus.

We had a dilemma and a few options:

  1. take the kids on two subways and a bus, 
  2. have the students stay at school and go to their regularly scheduled classes that they and the teachers had not planned for (most kids did not have any school materials with them), or
  3. have the students sit in the auditorium and watch semi-educational-college-related movies the rest of the day.

We chose option 3.

I thought it would be fine since during the first film, the students were enthralled.  They even asked if the schools in the movie were real.  Some asked other college-related questions.  They were entertained, and quiet.  I enjoyed the movie myself.

Then we had lunch and then we offered the kids some snacks for the second movie.

The kids were not as peaceful during this movie.  I think several had seen it already, and they wanted to talk and gossip and cause some drama.

I wanted them to be quiet.

I didn't want them dropping their snacks on the floor, I didn't want them poking at each other and irking each other.

I just wanted peace.

I wish I could have offered them a different sort of snack, something I wish I could have cooked up for them to help the situation:


I hope the time does not come again soon when I have to, basically, babysit (mostly unstructured) a gang of middle schoolers.

4 comments:

  1. That sounds like a nightmare. I teach five 10-year old girls on Sunday . . . I can't imagine an entire auditorium filled with middle schoolers! You deserve a cupcake.

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    1. It was madness at times. Didn't help that all of the teachers who were to go on the trip were not in the auditorium most of the time. I wish I knew where they were going... I would have snuck off, too.

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  2. Oh darling, how I've missed your stories! I had supervision yesterday, and while your pain seems so much greater than mine, I can absolutely and without a doubt relate to it! Bake on, sister!

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    Replies
    1. The joys of supervision. I would have traded that instead of the day with the eighth graders!

      You should see if Jacqueline can make up a batch of those for the kids at your school - though, they might actually want to give them to the teachers instead of taking them for themselves.

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