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The five things that can go wrong on a field trip (and always do)
Don’t you hate when this happens?
- Permission slips
You told them they would need one numerous times, you told their parents they would need one numerous times and you emailed/texted/posted a letter saying exactly the same thing. And yet, here they are: excited, grinning with enthusiasm, their backpacks overflowing and not a single persmission slip in sight.
- The packed lunches
You’ve spent 30 minutes travelling in a 1970s living room masquerading as a bus, and for some reason every child has already eaten their lunch. Why school trips cause insatiable hunger, no one knows, but what you do know is that your carefully prepared meal is going to be shared into 30 equal parts.
- The lost items
Yes, they’ve heard the spiel about the school not being responsible for lost or stolen items, but guess who is running back through every exhibition room searching for a missing iPod? Wide-eyed and frantic, you interrogate anyone who looks vaguely official, only to eventually get a call from another teacher to say that the iPod has been found. At the bottom of the child’s bag…
- The vomit
Excessive excitement, excessive sugar, excessive tiredness and excessively aggressive driving by the bus driver. There is no combination more accomplished at causing vomit than that. You reach for the sick bag, but you know it’s too late. The children in the seats behind scramble for safety as the stream of sick winds slowly towards the back of the coach.
- Missing parents
You begin to think that, this time, things are going to be different. But then you spot them: the one student standing all alone. A phone call, some swearing, and then a screech into the car park. The frantric parent loads the student into the car with profuse apologies and protests that they are “sure it said 5pm not 4pm”. And with that, you finally head home, vowing never to do this again but knowing full well you’ll be repeating the process next term.