One of the things I miss these days is writing about kids. I'm beginning to think writing is more of a winter thing instead of a spring and summer thing, and I'm beginning to think the culprit is the tremendous task of planning and providing field trips. There is simply little if any time to write.
But field trips are probably the best thing we do at the Garden School, so it's a toss up. Every teacher looks forward to taking the children here there and everywhere, and it's a collective pride and excitement that makes us do this year after year.
If you tell a person removed from the early childhood experience that you have just taken fifty very young children on a six hour bus trip to another city to visit the zoo, they gasp. And "I don't know how you do it," is the usual response of people right in the heart of the early childhood experience. We are the only school in our city that does this. The question is why?
When you look at the whole picture of field trips and their importance, you have to first examine your group. Who are the children in your care and what do they need individually from the teachers who care for them? Most children need affirmation. They need someone to simply watch them experience new things. Add the next thing: they need to grow, to expand inside and out as human beings. They need more than a classroom to grow. They need experiences that many families just cannot provide. They need to go, to see, to do something out of the ordinary, to spend their summer outside.
Then there are the deeper reasons, and those reasons to travel begin with trust. The student teacher bond is a crucial part of teaching. Trust between two or three or even four generations is like the trust between a grandmother and grandchild. Trust encourages the inner development of the child. It encourages him to see beyond himself and his own needs. It helps him reach into parts of his own emotional life and experience and grow. He takes a teacher's hand, he smiles at her, he talks to her and tells her what he thinks and is beginning to believe. He is not afraid. The teacher who is experienced listens and brings out the best in the child. She or he has time to listen, to re-affirm the child as the child sees something new or interesting or handles a problem he has never handled before.
Field trips give everyone new experiences, and much needed leisure hours to explore, to discover new things, to see new things, and the bond of teacher student grows into a solid trust. This trust, this friendship, this attachment built by experiences like field trips and swimming, helps a teacher to teach nearly anything to a child. Not only is it an investment in the development of the child, it is an investment in the coming school year.
When you look at the whole picture of providing field trips to a large group of children, you have to evaluate your staff. If your school or day care is a revolving door of newbie teachers, it won't work. The staff has to be a cohesive group that knows when and how to rely on one another. There can be no weak spots in the program. A teacher who holds back, won't manage, won't participate, won't volunteer without being told is a liability. Teachers create a team and are constantly in motion to provide for the children and the children are watching! On the other hand, a teacher who is constantly looking at what needs to be done next and volunteering to do it makes any excursion easier.
When you look at the whole picture of providing field trips for the first time, the question of where to go is always a difficult one because the unknown can be a liability once you get there if this is not something familiar. The idea of taking 50 children for a two mile deep cave tour is probably won't be the first trip. But after a school has taken several shorter trips, the cave tour actually becomes one of the easy ones.
When we first started to think about it, we began to examine what was available to do in our area. We have the Abraham Lincoln spots, we have a Utopian community, an Archabby, we have some play parks, we have various forests, we have a great natural lake for swimming not too far away, we have the largest cave in the world, we have three other cities in three other states with zoos within a three hour ride. So you decide what of those things is doable and if the children would like to see those things. You begin with the closest and see how everybody responds.
Planning takes a long time and a lot of thought and talk among teachers. This can't be an administrative only job. You can't tell a group of teachers to take a group of children over to a park and expect that it will be successful. It has to be a focus of everyone on staff.
Planning begins with the accommodations like a driver. Finding a driver is not always easy. Finding a driver who is on your wavelength is crucial, because you will want to explore many places if this works for your group, and your driver will get you there and work out the difficulties for you. We have had the same driver for over 11 years, and she is more than a part of our summer life at school, she is a part of our whole program. Drivers are excellent about knowing where to stop, how to get there, how to provide the best on the road care and will have your lunch when you need it!
Then there is the matter of feeding young children every four hours. Food must be brought, and individual lunch boxes won't work because children won't carry their lunches far, won't know it belongs to them, and you don't know what mother has packed; it could be a box of candy bars for a hot day.
So what is dream mode? A freshly made on the spot lunch for 50 in ten minutes? Why not?
Over the years our school has developed a way of carrying the makings for an outstanding lunch that is preparable in ten minutes and feeds 50. It is absolutely in step with the USDA Child Care Food Program guidelines. It takes a lot of planning and thought at first and is liable to keep the food provider up at night wondering if it will work, but it works even three hours away from home and rarely are there leftovers!
The idea is to find a protein source and bread the children really like and enough variety that they all want to eat it. We have tried every kind of bread, roll, bun, tortilla cut every kind of way, and the easiest and most desired bread is French bread. We take 10 to 12 soft whole wheat loaves in a reusable grocery bag and a knife and cutting board and tray to cut open the bread length-wise, fill it on the spot and then cut wedges for the children who line up and ask pleasantly for their favorite. They are given a cup of milk and sit down to eat their sandwich peacefully.
Pampered Chef carries a group of pre-freezable take-a-longs called Chillzane that we use to keep our salads fresh until lunch. We take farm fresh egg salad, albacore tuna salad, bologna, salami, ham, turkey, cheese, peanut butter, honey, and jam. A child can have whatever he or she wants.
We take carrots and dip, pickles, olives, Pringles because they pack nicely with the bread. We take a big bag of washed apples, and sometimes a watermelon, and last but not least homemade chocolate chips cookies - because it is a picnic!
We take two gallons plus milk in one cooler and lemon water in another because lemons will fortify children.
We also take teacher food like chicken salad, pasta salad, condiments, crab and shrimp salad. But most of our parents simply want to open the cookies!
The secret is to find separate very good containers that don't open and will square off in your cooler.
Making a permanent list of what you need helps keep the job simple. Finding cutting boards that collapse from Brylane Home, knives, spreaders, wash cloths, re-closeable bags, utensils, cups openers, etc will you need makes the work load half.
Before taking children anywhere there are teacher jobs which must be managed before you go. One teacher must be in charge of having an official roster of names. The roll must be called before leaving the school. Children must be counted and the numbers must agree on paper and in real life. One of our nice features is Miss Kelly has an eye for who was seated where with whom, so she instantly knows who is not where they are supposed to be.
We call the older children to get on the bus first; the youngest sit in the front. Nobody leaves their seat unless directed by a teacher. Some games are brought for longer trips. We count children before we leave school and every time we assemble. Lines are something we teach at school. Lines are quiet places. There is a discipline to lines that must be enforced by every single teacher and parent on a field trip. Children make lines for safety, for order and for public places.
When you arrive at your destination, teachers must be able to handle the children easily. There should always be one teacher to help children get off the bus. Children do lose their footing and would have fallen from the bus if a helpful adult had not caught the faller and prevented a serious injury. Two teachers need to control lines, one for the boys and one for the girls. This distinction helps shorten lines. One teacher needs to make contact with the people who are at the site.
Having a uniform shirt helps identify children. It is impossible to keep track of 50 children unless they are all wearing the same thing. Uniform shirts allows more freedom and more space to explore. There should be a teacher in the front of the line, several teachers along the way and a teacher must ALWAYS bring up the rear.
Breaking into ability groups helps. Every teacher should be assigned a group of children that are listed in print on an itinerary that he or she receives before the trip starts. Mini rosters help teachers feel secure about their charge. It's helpful if teachers go to the internet to explore a field trip site so they are familiar with what there is to do at any site. Keeping a schedule is important if you want your group to see everything and still get home on time to waiting parents. Trying to eliminate the problems before they arise is the best way of handling most field trip issues.
It's all very doable when you start small.
The basics are: a place to go; a good staff to take the children; a great driver; a plan for doing, eating, and counting kids, and the will and desire to do something that will bond teachers to children. And how do you know it's a success? When children come back to your school year after year after they have gone on to public schools for the summer program you provide, you know you are doing something right.
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