Not a Very Good Idea

The Field Trip

I acknowledge now that it was not a very good idea. In fact, in light of events, I acknowledge that it was a very bad idea. When I was planning the field trip, though, it seemed like the perfect way to capture the curiosity and imaginations of the children. It seemed like a beautiful way to teach them the wonder of natural science in a way where they could be part of the spectacular nature of, well...nature.

The Plans

All of the planning followed the usual procedure, involved completing the usual forms, and ended with the usual approvals. There would be food, transportation, chaperones, and teachers.

The day's plans were straightforward. We would meet in the parking lot of the pre-school, board a chartered bus, sing songs, discuss where we were going, what we expected to see, talk about what we would do when we arrived, and share dreams of what we hoped to learn while we were there. I will admit dream sharing was very Pollyanna and grandiose, but every teacher has that moment of idealism, of educational nirvana, where the material we teach is sublime, our students are enlightened, and the way in which we are received is with a reverence reserved for the likes of Elvis or the Beatles (reunited and living, not pieced together from the grave).

We would be on the bus for five hours each way today, headed toward Smoky Mountain National Park. Going through the personnel checklist in my head, we had:

Parents, who clamored with wild abandon, the desperation that only came from fleeting youth, to be selected to chaperone the trip;

Park rangers, which only made sense since we were visiting a national park; and

Teachers, because a school field trip typically required teachers from the school, usually the teachers from the class attending the field trip.

Advance arrangements had been made. The plans were well-conceived, and every adult had a booklet covering nearly every eventuality of the day. Once we reached the park, park rangers were slated to welcome our party of teachers, chaperones/parents, and students, 35 mostly very well-behaved four- and five-year olds from the two Pre-K classes.

In retrospect, Mammoth Cave may have been a safer bet.

Lesson 1: I could plan and plan and plan and still wind up with shit on my shoe, in my hair, and a little in my teeth, too.

Lesson 2: There's some shit you can never clean off. Somehow the stench just stays with you, lingering, festering.

Of course, the morning of the field trip I knew none of that.

The Ride

The trip to the park followed a sine curve of activity with predictable peaks and valleys. The children, initially, were excited to be on a bus 'with a bathroom!' They did, indeed, sing songs. One of the very good things about teaching young children is this: most of them don't know how to count backward from 100, which meant the adults on the bus were spared the nearly unceasing classic, "100 Bottles of Beer on the Wall."

The first dip in activity saw many children nodding off. At that age, most had been weaned off morning naps, but our early morning departure and the excitement of the field trip had taken a quick toll on the kids' energy. When we crested the next peak of the sine wave, it was snack time.

Rather than fighting against the motion of the bus, we planned a stop. Drink boxes were distributed, fruit and pudding cups were opened, and, invariably, someone cried because seeing one child enjoying the trip with a parent made the parentless child yearn for Mommy, Daddy, a sibling, dog, or home.

After snacks, an incongruous amount of time was spent making sure everyone used the onboard toilet. After observing the fascination with toilets on a bus, I speculated the children's minds would be blown the first time they used a restroom on a plane (if they hadn't already). The first time I flew anywhere, the sucking action (and ghostly sound) in the toilet and sink drain captured my attention so totally, my mother thought something had happened to me and asked a flight attendant to try to open the door to ensure I was all right.

The Teaching

After toileting, the other teachers and I began to prep the children for the day. There were so many lessons the Great Smoky Mountains could teach all of us--never too old to learn. When trying to decide how we should focus our teaching, we teachers put our suggestions in a gift bag and then a teacher from the newborn classroom drew four slips of paper. Our director read the lesson topics, and then we split into our pre-arranged groups and each took a topic.

My group's topic was tree leaves. I could identify a lot of trees on sight, but there were a good handful that weren't growing in my backyard or the park down the street or the park by Target. I had some self-education to do. To make the lesson resonate for the children, we decided to purchase a small binder for each child and stocked it with paper, labeled with the names and photos of the types of trees we would encounter. We also included the shapes of the leaves for each tree. The directive was to pick up (from the ground) the leaves of the trees that corresponded with the names and pictures of the trees and leaves in the little binders. It would be a sort of nature scavenger hunt.

As I re-think this scavenger hunt business--in hindsight, it wasn't a great idea.

The other topics were simple things like not starting forest fires and water conservation. The fourth topic had to do with bear safety. The park rangers said we wouldn't be bothered by bears while we were there, which was a huge relief. Mostly a huge relief.

My team's fun and minimally physically exhausting activity would be the crown jewel of the day because we were sending home a souvenir of nature.

There was a nexus between the leaf hunt and the bears. Perhaps if no one had mentioned the bears everything would have been all right. We didn't lose a child or parent on the field trip. No. Thank the lord for that, or the lawsuits would have been spilling out of every law office in the area when we returned home.

The Buddy System

Every child and every parent had a buddy. We teachers didn't--because we didn't think we needed buddies. We were the freaking leaders of this excursion. We returned to the bus, settling the children and the chaperones. We then started trying to account for the teaching staff.

We were missing one: Water Conservation Wendy. Before involving the chaperones, we teachers tried to remember the last time and place any of us had seen her. Turns out it was during the leaf hunt.

When the chaperones realized our departure was delayed, we had to inform them we were missing someone. One of the chaperones remembered Wendy wandering off to find some leaf or something. I hopped off the bus to find a ranger in guest services.

"Hi, sir. It appears we've lost a teacher in the park," I said shakily.

"You're with the pre-school. I know where you all were today," he said, and what I heard was concern, and all the ghosts were crossing all the graves just then. "Did any of you happen to see any bears over that way today?"

"What?" I asked, like I didn't hear him clearly, but, in truth, I had heard him all too clearly. "One of the rangers said we weren't near any bear activity. Were there bears nearby?"

"Well," he said, taking off his ranger hat and wiping his forehead with napkin, or wait, was that a bandanna he pulled out of his back pocket. "We had some reports of some cubs who had gotten lost, and the mamas like to look after their young. Some folks earlier had mentioned seeing the babies.

"Oh, sweet baby Jesus," I said. "Is it possible our missing teacher could just be lost in the woods or the forest or on the mountain somewhere?"

"Anything is possible," he said.

"I need to call our school director," I answered. In truth, if Water World Wendy hadn't been swallowed up by a time machine or aliens, I hoped the mama bear got her because why on earth would anyone—an adult teacher, in charge of small children—wander off from a group for which they shared partial responsibility?

Ranger Rob (his name tag said it, and I was impressed by the alliteration) got on his radio to call in our missing person. Things wouldn't go well for Where's Wendy if she happened to be stranded overnight.

Ms. Dorothea, our school director, was not happy with me. Initially, she thought this field trip was overly ambitious for the Pre-K kids, but she warmed to the idea as more and more parents rallied around the trip. Now, her misplaced support was withdrawn. "Jenelle, do you know who has to call Nitwit Wendy's parents? If that girl is eaten or mauled by a bear…this will not be good for you, and your career aspirations can be nothing more than the wisps of smoke you all blew up my ass when you were trying to get me to approve this folly in the first place." I heard silence for a few seconds before a very loud (Ranger Rob heard it, too), "Report back in one hour. With good news." The line went dead.

The Calamity

I went back to the bus to explain to the teachers and chaperones what was happening. If they wanted to head home, great. If they wanted to wait an hour, that was great, too. They opted to wait an hour, and this time everyone had a buddy. The chaperones, kids, and some of the teachers went to the gift shop. The remaining teachers accompanied Ranger Rob and me, all of us making quick work in returning to the leaf hunt general vicinity. Dusk began leaching daylight, and in the gloaming, I saw a ridiculously bright green jacket lying on the ground. At one time, I thought the jacket was cute. Now, it was something I would want to use to choke Woebegone Wendy (but I didn't know that yet).

Ranger Rob leaned toward me, "Do you smell something?"

"Like a forest fire?" I half-shrieked.

"No," he said, "but I definitely smell something burning."

Our group kept walking, and now we brandished flashlights. We still had 30 minutes to get back to the bus. "Hey. Do you hear something? Just over there…" one of the other teachers whisper-shouted.

Ranger Rob said, "You don't need to whisper. I don't think we need to be worried about bears." We crested a rise, not a steep one, but still, we could see downhill a bit, and there was Wendy. She was sitting around an illegal campfire, smoking a doob the size of an Italian sausage. She was with four other people, all in their twenties, and they were laughing, slapping each other on the back, having a great old time, and just high as kites.

"What the hell, Waste-oid Wendy," I said, slightly out of breath when I reached the campfire. "You realize you're supposed to be on a work outing today, right?"

"Jen-Nelle, hey…" she said. "I heard these guys in the woods and decided to see what was up. Probably shouldn't have done that, huh?" She started laughing, then hyperventilating.

Ranger Rob started telling the rest of Wendy's Wanderers about fines and infractions, and I yanked her off the ground. Our co-workers were unimpressed. "You're a dick, Wendy. We're holding the bus for you. What were you thinking?"

"I went back to where everyone was doing the leaf hunt, but you'd all left, and these guys were still hanging out, so I went back. If I went looking for you, I might have gotten lost," she said, and her eyes were so red. I hoped she sat on the bus next to the child with the highest pitched voice in the entire class. I hoped no one gave her food or snacks, because the munchies were going to happen for her, and I wanted her to suffer.

When we returned to guest services in the visitor's center and I had a cell signal again, I put Wendy on the phone with Ms. Dorothea. "Heya, Ms. Dorothea," Wendy slurred. Ms. Dorothea didn't need to hear more than 'heya,' to know. She'd get the whole story from all of us later. I did hear Ms. Dorothea slam her phone on something, after which she, presumably, ended the call.

Jenelle's Lament

Was my education career going to be short circuited by Wazzup-Wendy? Entirely possible. Was it sort of of wrong to wish she'd been eaten by a bear? Not even sort of wrong. Totally wrong. But she was still laughing when she got on the bus, waving at the kids, giving everyone jazz hands and making moronic faces.

I hip-checked her on my way back to my seat on the bus, stopping briefly to whisper in her ear, "You're a bag of dicks, Wendy…a bag of dicks."