Oops, I left my baby on the bus.

This week we took a field trip which involved 40 students and 4 teachers taking the subway. We split up into groups of 10 students per 1 teacher and hoped to use different doors to enter and exit the train.

Terrified I would lose one, we talked extensively about how once the subway arrived, I would hold the door and they would scurry on. Since we couldn’t guarantee that we would find seats near each other, we agreed no one would look for a seat until they received direction from me. While waiting for directions, they would hold on for dear life in the spot in front of the doors directly adjacent to where we would enter the train. I know this seems like a lot of instructions for actions that take less than 10 seconds to complete, but I knew these kids.

They are a bunch of bright, insightful, intelligent, introspective, analytic, creative as well as incredibly entertaining group of kids and I am honored to be their student teacher. They inspire me and push me to become a better teacher. Bless their hearts, they even root for me. They want/expect decently planned lessons and a chance to creatively perform their understanding of the material. However, I have spent my entire student teaching experience fighting to keep their focus. I have done everything including an 8 count dance, to maintain a united classroom focus, so I know that all it takes is one sneeze, one wise crack, one dirty word graffiti-ed on a near by billboard to loose their focus, and subsequently lose one of them as we board the train.

Thankfully all ten in my group made it to the museum and back safely however, one of the teachers might have been impressed with one of their student’s wise cracks or perhaps they found a piece of subway graffiti particularly interesting because one teacher and their group missed our stop coming back. I guess distraction haunts more than just children.