You know when you get so tired and start spacing, thus making yourself more tired because it's now later in the night and you still haven't gotten anything done? That's where I am right now, but it is a good tired from today.
Warning: As you can see, this post is very long and it's more for the purposes of recording in painstaking detail the planning and execution of my first ever field trip. I'm not expecting anyone to read it all, but if you have an hour to spare, I added some headings to make it easier.
The beginning
The start of the process began when I noticed an ad (or maybe in an email) for Target field trip grants. It was due early November, and I started an account in October to write a proposal for the grant. The maximum amount is 800 dollars, to cover costs of admission tickets, transportation, etc. I decided to apply because I knew that the district is making huge budget cuts and wanted to find alternate funding that would give me more freedom to plan trips. I almost didn't make the deadline too. When the deadline was about one week away, I was going through a period of extreme misery. Thank goodness that Courtney pushed me to finish the application. We met one Wednesday at a Starbucks where I spent a good 2 hours typing up a proposal while trying not to sound too cheesy. It took my mind off the troubling sadness, and encouraged the stubborn side to not be set back by it.
After some minor modifications with feedback from Courtney, I just sent it in, not wanting to dwell any longer on the essay. It's always hard to sound profound in these writings; I feel so overly dramatic and crusader. Anyways, I had forgotten about it soon after for a good 2 months.
Then one day in January, I got a Congratulations! I am the tentative recipient of the Target Field Trip grant (For 800 dollars too)! Tentative worried me, but it didn't take much to fax in a form to confirm and get a check in the mail a month later. The initial elation was awesome. My former GSI from microbiology saw my fb status and offered to show her lab to my students. Now I could begin to set things in motion.
Planning
Field trips are an excellent means to experiencing the joy of navigating the bureaucracy. After bouncing back and forth between two staff to answer questions, filling out paperwork, and then pestering the staff during my prep (which actually takes up quite a lot of time) to see the status with the district. Here's a brief overview of steps:
1. Fill out a field trip packet, stating the date, times, number of students, costs, justification with a CA standard (which was a challenge since I wanted to take the students to UCLA just to see a college environment and be more motivated towards school... apparently that reason isn't a CA state standard, and would not have been justified). In the end, I decided to use an investigation standard to relate to the graduate lab tour. The field trip packet needs to be submitted a good month before the actual date.
2. Turn in the field trip packet to the secretary, who has to retype everything in a new set of forms.
3. Bother, bother, pester, pester at every opportunity to the secretary or categorical specialist (that is an actual position title) during prep, after school, any day that I remember or have time. "Did you hear back from the district yet? Can I check the status of my field trip on March?" I didn't hear a confirmed date on the bus until the week before the actual date.
On the UCLA end, it took at least 4-5 emails, phone calls to a different tour department, even sending my sister as a messenger to the office to schedule a date in March for a cub tour. Even when the date was scheduled, I hadn't heard a yay or nay from the district on that date. So I could only wait and hope.
Ordering meal tickets for a group of 50 was an extra step, but I could not stomach the idea of bringing students to a college campus without seeing the dining halls and getting a feel for a perk of dorming. These kids eat such crap food every day that I hoped, if not for a beautiful campus, they would want to go to school for the food. (I have to think shallowly because that's I feel many of them see right now.) It took another series of online searching, phone calls, faxes, and then delivering a check. There was a close call with getting the grant check deposited, then having a check written out for UCLA dining, picking up the check, driving it to school to my sister, who dropped off the check (whew!) the week of.
Then there was permission slips, deciding who to bring, and then running a list of student names to copy and deliver to appropriate teachers, finding chaperones, you get the picture I hope?
It would have been devastating had this field trip not gone through, for all the hope and coordinating of dates with multiple parties. But THANKFULLY, it did. And I thank the stars for such a day!
The actual day
The itinerary was, to leave at 9 AM, get to UCLA by 10 to catch an hour long cub tour led by a UCLA student, then walk to the botany lab and get a second tour with my former microbiology GSI (grad student instructor), and then eat at De Neve with my sister for the last hour. What actually happened, bus left at 9:10, got to UCLA at 10:15 (during the trip I was half twitching with worry about missing the 15 min late grace period for the cub tour), made the campus tour by 11:20 AM. Near the end of the cub tour, a protest for public education walked by, which was entertaining at first for me and for the students. However, it turned a bit for the worse when a couple of my students wanted to march with them, not because they support the cause (one girl even asked me, "What's public education?") but because it'd be fun to march and shout. Of course I didn't want to waste time protesting, and the kids are my responsibility. What really pissed me off was that one of the protesters had the nerve to shout in the loudspeaker, "You are absolutely free to march along with us. This is for YOU! You should be able to do what you want!" Just as I felt my students were reaching the tipping point to swarm along with them (a group of 44, mind you), that would have been impossible to stop, I yanked back 2 students that were magnetically drawn to the protest and shouted "GO DO ALL THAT WHEN YOU'RE IN COLLEGE, BUT UNTIL THEN, YOU'RE WITH ME!" Thank god my kids listened.
And how DARE the protesters just try to steal my students away? THEY aren't responsible for these kids! The fools, they should teach instead of just protesting, to make some REAL difference. I wish I had said something like that to them, intead of just staring incredulously, like, "Are you CRAZY?" at them.
We were already behind schedule and walked as fast as 50 people could walk, to the botanical gardens. My former GSI Annette would have given the same tour twice if we had come earlier, but she ended up showing about 25 kids the tour and the rest walked around the gardens and went to the student store (an AVID tutor chaperone, Amber, took them - thank goodness she went to UCLA). The tour was pretty neat; the students saw a couple bacterial cultures and a greenhouse with a bunch of legume plants. The kids LOVED the mimosa plant, which folds when touched. I think it was the highlight of the tour, and the cool thing was, that I got a free Mimosa plant at the end! Too bad my classroom has no windows to give adequate sunlight, so it's now sitting in my apartment. It was a pain to carry the heavy potted plant, especially since it had long tendrils lined with little thorns. I recruited a bigger student to carry it for me.
Then the final trek for the dining hall, which is located on a hill. The whole time, the kids were asking "Are we there yet?" and "Those [laggers] need to hurry up!" I was hungry too, but it was amusing to hear the question, "When are we going to eat?" before the first tour was even over. Thankfully De Neve is the closest hall to the campus. But it took a little more running around inside to different staff to tell them that my party of 50 did have a right to be there. Thank god someone made a phone call and verified my reservation, because I had no paperwork with me to prove the payment. (Definitely going to be ready for that next time.) This left about 25 minutes left to eat, and at this point I had to trust the kids to go on their own to find food and sit at a table without running off. They SWARMED the pizza line and the frozen yogurt line. Figures. I got a froyo too as a reward though... couldn't resist! One of my students, Brian, told me he had "4 ice creams, a brownie with lots of M & M's, and pizza" (Barf).
My sister had joined us for lunch, though I was so caught up trying to figure out meal tickets and then eating that I had forgotten about her (oops) until I sat down for 5 minutes. Thankfully, she caught us at the tail end of the trip and ate with me and then took a couple pictures. Some of my students got to meet her, and they were pretty fascinated. They said we look alike, which is nice because I'm tired of hearing them say I look like other Asian people who don't look remotely like me.
Returning to school
We were about 15 min late to the bus at the roundabout, but the driver didn't seem upset. Whew!!! We got back around 1:55, and I sent the kids back to 7th. Although I did have sub coverage for 7th, guilt/lack of trust led me back to the students anyway and I relieved the sub. When I got back, after the initial surprise, the students told me that the school was on lockdown for 2 hours. I don't know why I didn't process the severity of the situation right away, and I don't even know the full story, just rumor that someone had gotten shot near the school. Not only is that just scary, but if I had been at school that day, I would have been stuck with 5th period for an extra hour, losing a prep period AND dealing with a noisier class at the same time.
I can only be thankful that my field trip students didn't have to be near that situation, and that I didn't have to deal with the extra hour of holding kids. But it's still rather frightening and saddening to be reminded of real danger so close to the school. This is why I want my students to get out, so badly.
There were 2 other college field trips this same week. One to UCI, and one the day after mine to UCLA. I personally believe that mine was the most kickass out of all of them. I'm sure the kids feel the same.
With my head held high,
lemontea
No comments:
Post a Comment