51 Kids and Washington, D.C.

Exceptional happened.


It is a week later (now posted a few weeks after THAT) and I am now in the beginning, again, of life post-D.C.. It is slow in coming to me, as I have forgotten a lot of things that didn't revolve around the trip.  All around me in the apartment is evidence that I have been busy. Nothing is in total shambles, but I have work to do in order to make my apartment seem like a hospitable place to be.   Currently, windows open, rainy weather here, it is a quiet summer shelter for a very tired me. 

'The third time is the charm' is technically true when I consider leading the trip.  I've been to D.C. 4 times in the last few years, but the first time, I got sick.  Really, altogether digustingly sick....I couldn't go to school for four days after the trip.  I had pink eye and maybe some bronchitis?  Certain elements of that trip are a little hazy, but really, the morning we woke up at 3:00 am to meet luggage and parents and kids at school, the pit in my stomach was gone.  

What a relief. 



I arrived home at 2:30 in the morning, early on Friday the 15th, after a 4 day long trip with 51 kids, a tour guide, a bus driver, a hotel liason, and 4 other chaperones.  Yesterday I could barely form real thoughts.  But today I am back.  
I had peace of mind on this trip, and I am still trying to figure out the how and why.  There are a lot of factors.  But mostly it's because I've done this 4 times, and a lot of people were praying for me, and now I know where to place things. 

All week I knew I had huge levels of responsibility amidst thoughts of communication and timing and appointments.  But again, there was that peace of mind.  I spent the week with a lot of good people.  We had a tour guide who KNEW things...not only the history of a place, but when to go there and how to get there.   We had respectful students.  The kind of people that proved everyone wrong in the face of their perceptions of 'what 8th graders are like'.  We talked about this before the trip, and, as usual, they rose to the occasion. 

We had a bus driver who knew how to negotiate D.C. traffic.  He was a parallel parking genius and knew when to blare the horn.  And in addition to that, I met new and interesting people.   This is, as I get older, becoming more and more the point of travel to any new place. 

Currently, my D.C. binder looks like this. 

It is a very good depiction of chaperone life because all confirmation letters, flight information, references to medical history, and heck, even some napkins are accessible.  Everything, except the instructions for how to assist someone in anaphilactic shock (thank you, God), were necessary.  By the end of the trip, we, the chaperones, still couldn't tell what the smear on the itinerary was.  Yesterday, the binder sat on my lap at the airport, a student accidentally sprayed a packet of ketchup all over me when eating fries.

So it was either that or chocolate.

I KNEW on the last day everyone starts to act like a toddler, but I didn't think it would involve leaving the trip with ketchup stains.  And so it goes.  But in the end, that really isn't anything that matters very much at all.

Here are a few things I learned. 

History speaks for itself.  So many of the things that we saw in memorials, in architecture, in people...it is awe inspiring and thought provoking and there, no longer a picture in textbook form.  I heard students saying to each other, 'I can picture this in my textbook, and now here it is.'  And what's more, for once, it wasn't the time for the history teacher to teach.  I felt that very keenly.  All year long I teach, but in D.C., I like say very little, and watch them have a conversation with new people about what they know.  They are proud of themselves.  I marvel at their connections. 

Confrontation, especially when you're tired, can really suck.  I had to remember my manners, and keep things away from being public and shameful, when I had to have direct and difficult conversations with students.  These people weren't perfect, and I wasn't either.  A few things hit the fan, and sometimes it made me angry.  Like 0 to 60 in a few short seconds.  And I don't think I get angry all that quickly, but teenagers can be a lot of things all at once.

It was hard because I KNOW these people...two years as their teacher forges a lot between us.  A lot of good, I realize, that can carry us through these moments of difficulty.  But doing something really idiotic in front of someone who knows them like I do was awkward for them.  And I called them on it.  I thought about their parents, and had a lot of compassion for the conflict they encounter at home, because a lot of this was about a lack of maturity, not lack of care.  

I saw that some people are desperate for resolution in the face of this awkwardness, but don't always understand how to express it.  And I didn't bail them out of this right away because it wouldn't have been appropriate to do so.   It would have made things that matter seem like they didn't have to. 

Probably it's easier on some levels navigating this as their parent because you just have the one kid to deal with.  I had 51.  And you've raised them since they were babies, and that helps too.  (Parents have literally said this to me before.)

Part of this too is that the kids are tired, and the weather is warm, and they're not sure what to do away from their parents or how to talk about it.  Even the most macho of students needed to let their guard down, and get help at some point.  And it's this so true?....the world looks very different at 2 am than it does at 10:30 the next day.  On a trip like this, if someone is inconsolable in the middle of the night, I am the one who talks with them.  Probably another reason for my complete lack of words yesterday.  Parenting can be overwhelming. 

So there was that. 

Also, this is a business partnership with a company.   So there are factors involved that keep you afloat all week long when you meet people for 4 days and heavily depend on their expertise.  I have told students about this numerous times in class.  We treat the bus well because to the driver, it's their baby.  We act a certain way in the hotel, on the street, in a museum to show respect to a lot of different kinds of people.  Etiquette 101 becomes very real and very important thing.   

We get to know people from the D.C. area too.  We eat meals with these guides and drivers and try to set them at ease about our time with them as well.  And at the end of the week we all shake hands and thank each other for doing our respective jobs well.  It's confusing for the kids because they DO bond to the people who help us, and then suddenly the bus rolls away and they are waving and we are gone.  I know this now...it is the bittersweet part of the trip.  When we drove to Baltimore, the kids felt a little bereft. For this reason I pack thank you cards and make sure everyone has said something to them.  It helps ease the transition and makes room for gratitude.

Business aside, I also realized how much I personally like timelines.  It makes sense to use this as a base for teaching history, but in D.C. the things that I always want to revisit are the timelines.  I like movement and order and a framework.  And musuems make graphic organizers pop.  I also like space for simplicity.  Hence, a timeline is thrilling to me. 

(Insert confident awareness of how dorky this really is.) 

George Washington's teeth....now that's a good example.  There sit the teeth, and behind them, a timeline stretching all the way across the wall behind them.  All year long I have talked about this timeline, and what it means to understand Washington as a person.  I feel that you DO understand more about his view of himself if you see that he took time to get powder for an aching tooth before going into battle during the French and Indian War in his 20s.   When I got to this part of the museum this year at Mount Vernon, I stood there for a minute alone, and realized that it's really just a small part of an exhibit, and not something as profound to others as I may have imagined. 

Which brings me to time in general.  The trip has evolved since I first took over, and it's a collection of old and new now that govern our limited time in D.C..  However, something that stands alone now is that every year, we find a time to rest and run around.  Literally, a kid did a fist pump this year in the National Cathedral when I whispered that we weren't going to a museum next...we were going to run around. 

We go to a huge field somewhere, this year it was by the Iwo Jima Marine Memorial, and play football or ultimate frisbee.  Or we lay in the grass.  Kids who need to RUN get a chance to do this, and come back to the bus so happy.  For this reason, the picture at the top of the page is one of my favorite pictures from the trip. 

Yes to this picture, and the feeling that accompanied it.

Another thing I learned is that I am a lot more fierce about life that I first thought.  Every year, this trip makes me fierce.  Not just in reference to making students know what I expect, but towards the world in general.  And I don't always think that fierce needs to be serious, but it's all things at once when it comes to me.  

This year one of the students was having a minor allergic reaction, and I needed someone in a nearby store to give me a token for the bathroom.  And fast.  (Apparently not just anyone is allowed in?)  They were about to send us away to another place, and I knew all at once that I wasn't going anywhere.

I didn't flip (that's not classy) but whatever I looked like at that moment changed the woman's decision, and she gave me the token free of charge.  Please and thank you and all of that, but I think as you grow and get older you realize what you really really want and are willing to dig in your heels and get it in the right way.  Even if you just want the nearest bathroom.

This year I really missed the old chaperones, and I really enjoyed getting to work with the new ones.  Thankfully those were really separate feelings.  Mostly I remembered the previous chaperones when I got to certain places that were really hilariously funny or solemn and meaningful together.  And it wasn't just a monument that elicited the feeling.  I was shocked at how MUCH I missed Maddie Baird when I stood by a certain counter at the gift shop in the Smithsonian Museum of American History.  She made me laugh just about everywhere we went, but especially so in small moments.  On the trip last year, buying friendship rings with her at this counter seemed like the obvious next step.  And that's just one example.   

All in all, this year I looked around at the world in a different way, even in stressful moments, met interesting new people, revisited old wonders, marveled at the ease of the trip, and had a really nice time.  I'm grateful that things went well.  And now I'm glad that it's summer!