Holy Field Trip!

Phew! What a day! Today, my class and I visited the wonderful California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco and we had a blast. Although we had no blood, no casts, and no one lost, our morning was a little rocky. Here's how it went:

First off, many of my students receive free/reduced lunches and when we go on a field trip, they have the option to order a sack lunch to take with us. Well, I turned in my class order along with 2 other classes' orders last week (21 kiddos total) and figured everything was honky-dory. Well, this morning, my colleague went to pick up our ordered lunches ten minutes before school started and they didn't have any of them. Not a one. Really? Now what? She said they didn't receive our list. I had no idea what to do. We didn't have enough money to pay for lunch for 21 kids. Luckily, I had my mom (thank God!) and another volunteer already in my room offer to go to the cafeteria to help the lunch lady put together lunches as fast as possible. They were amazing! They finished just before we needed to get on the bus, so it was perfect. Fire number one: extinguished.

Speaking of busses... so, we get up to the front of the school, and we are expecting two 84-seaters. We had four third grade classes of 29 kiddos with 10 adults per class. That's 156 people. That's a lot of people, but not enough to fill two 84-seaters, so I thought we were good. But, they sent us one 84-seater and one 66-seater. That's only 150 seats. Now, I don't know about you, but I'm pretty sure that 156 people cannot fit in 150 seats. Again? Hadn't we already had enough stress for the day? And it's not like we were going down the street. We were driving from San Jose to San Francisco (about 45 miles each way). Once again, an amazing parent saved the day and offered to drive up 6 adults (and pay for parking!). Fire number two: extinguished.

The entire bus ride there, I was a ball of nerves. I just knew something else was going to go wrong. Did I mention that I was in charge of orchestrating this field trip? I felt like nothing was going to go right. When we got there, I hopped off of the bus, and after 15 minutes of check-in, we were on our way in. I was smart enough to not give myself a group of students to take care of, so a few other teachers, my mom, and I went straight to the cafe to grab a much needed cup of coffee. I was finally able to unwind a little after the mornings' events.

The rest of the day went off without a hitch and we had no blood, no casts, no puke, and each of my 29 students returned safely to school. Needless to say, I was exhausted and packed up and took off as soon as possible. What a day! Glad that one's over...

Claude the albino alligator.

Jackson's chameleon

A chambered nautilus

Panther chameleon

Many lessons were learned today!