what to do if student is lost on field trip
A Kid Gets Lost on a Field Trip: So and Now
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— I loved everything about this column except its perhaps inevitable conclusion. It'due south by Alan Newland, a erstwhile teacher and headteacher in London who now lectures on teaching and runs the siteÂnewteacherstalk. He's recalling being a make new instructor taking his Year 6 kids (x year olds) on a field trip to the dinosaurs 20 years ago (boldface mine):
THE Twenty-four hours I LOST A Kid ON THE TUBE by Alan Newland
…I had 30 kids. I was on my ain (except for a mum who worked part-time at the school – known in those days as "a Lady Helper"). The kids are excited. It's a day out. All they care well-nigh is comparing their sandwich fillings. We are on the platform and I run into the starting time train coming is not going our manner. And so I'm trying to brand myself heard to a higher place the melee of commuters, dancing up and down the platform trying to keep the kids dorsum: "This is non our railroad train everybody! Stand dorsum! Stand back! It's non our train!" I remember I've got the situation under control.
I haven't.
At that place's e'er one isn't in that location?
Information technology's Maxine. She's a lovely kid but she'south not taking a blind bit of notice of me. The railroad train comes in, the doors open up and she jumps on thinking everyone is going to follow her. The kids come across her and shout: "Maxine! Become off, it'due south not our railroad train!" But it'south too late, before she can, the doors close.
I volition never forget her face.
It'south a bit similar that painting by Munch – y'all know the 1 – it'southward called "The Scream". Only this fourth dimension it's with a black daughter wearing horn-rimmed glasses and her face is pressed confronting the door of the tube train equally information technology passes me.
Now… simply break for a minute and think how the other kids reacted to this?
Maybe with horror? Stupor? Panic? Perchance even a little nervous laughter? Well, if you think laughter, y'all're only one-half right.
It was raucous, uncontrolled hilarity. Those kids were laughing hysterically. "Maxine! You idiot!" they screamed, pointing at her and bouncing down the platform, chasing the railroad train for as long as possible earlier information technology disappears in to the darkened tunnels of the London Undercover.
I am the i in a state of horror, shock and panic â€" considering I don't even know where the train is going.
These days when you use the London Underground it has announcers, information boards, assist points, CCTV, friendly people in blue uniforms everywhere. So, there was zilch. You would have to go back up to street level to find someone to assist.
I set near trying to organise my "Lady Helper" to manage the kids while I set off for some real help. I am running back and forth trying to notice where the train has gone and what to exercise. The kids are notwithstanding falling about laughing. They remember this is great. Fifty-fifty the "Lady Helper" thinks it's funny.
Within a couple of minutes, someone walks round the corner and I become a existent shock….
It was Maxine.
How did that happen? Well, the side by side stop is Euston Square, only 50 seconds away. She had evidently jumped off the train there, run over the footbridge and in that location was a train coming back in the contrary management. I kid you not – she was dorsum with us within 3 minutes. Ok. Four. Tops. In fact, information technology was and then quick, the kids were still laughing when she walked round the corner.
Just boy, was I relieved. Phew!
So off we went to the Natural History Museum. When I got the kids back to schoolhouse I asked them to write all about dinosaurs and what do y'all think they wrote about? Yeah, Â y'all've guessed it.
But I'll tell you this. Information technology didn't even occur to me to report that incident to the head teacher. I've often wondered why. But I think over the years I've ended that, in a funny sort of way, nothing actually happened.
Yes, I know I lost a child on the London Underground… but at that place was no real incident to report. Maxine wasn't hurt, she wasn't even upset. Maybe she was a little embarrassed because the other kids were laughing at her, but other than that at that place was no crisis, not fifty-fifty an issue. I didn't fifty-fifty think of mentioning it to Maxine'south mum.
Fast-forrad 20 years.
I am now the head teacher of a master schoolhouse in Hackney and my Year 6 teacher wants to take her 24 kids to the Natural History Museum. How many adults do you lot recall she has going on the trip this time? Iv? Five? Six? Actually it'south seven. This includes two parents who won't hold to let their children proceed the trip unless they are in attendance too.
The teacher, a great girl who has bags of energy and ideas, has already spent her weekend doing a reconnaissance visit. She's done a risk assessment, insurance forms, permission slips and planned the educational outcomes brilliantly. Off they get to the Natural History Museum with 24 kids and six other adults. It'southward even so a bus downward to Kings Cantankerous and the tube round to South Kensington. They get to the platform of Kings Cross Underground. Guess what happens?
No, it's not the teacher who gets on the wrong train this time.
No, Maxine has non grown upwards to be the Station Manager of Kings Cross.
Believe information technology or non, exactly the aforementioned affair happens. Merely this time, it's not ane girl, information technology's four!
The train pulls in and the teacher is calling out: "It'south not our train everybody! Stand dorsum! Stand up dorsum!" But in spite of the fact that there's a group of girls with an adult stood right next to them, they are so excited they are not listening to anyone. As the train doors open, they jump on. Everyone is shouting for them to get off. Only earlier they practice, in the melee of the crowded train, the doors close and the railroad train moves off.
What's the reaction of the other kids this time?
Laughter?
Wrong. (Only you probably knew that already.)
Shock. Panic. Screaming. Crying. This time it'south all of those and more – not just from the four on the train, but the other 20 notwithstanding left on the platform, plus some of the adults too.
And the iv girls on the train didn't do what Maxine did and jump off at the adjacent stop. No, they were so freaked out past this they stayed on the train to the end of the line. Information technology was the Metropolitan Line. It finishes in Amersham in Buckinghamshire.
Back at schoolhouse I become a phone telephone call from the station manager at that place saying to me "I've got four of your girls here. What do you want me to do with them?" So I send a teacher out in a taxi to bring them back. In that location was no harm done. Just the side by side day I go those 24 kids together and I ask them: "How many of yous have been on the London Underground before?" Out of 24 Hackney born and bred kids, just viii had e'er previously been on the tube.
Now in that location's a change of life-manner for you lot. Twenty years previously, Maxine, as a ten-year quondam girl had taken herself off to school everyday using buses and tube trains without the slightest care. She had built up noesis, a sense of management, common sense and most chiefly the confidence to bargain with a state of affairs if something went slightly awry.
These kids — and it's non their error â€" simply they don't accept what Maxine had. Most live inside three hundred yards of the school but their parents drive them to school every solar day. Most don't accept the confidence and the ability to appraise run a risk and deal with it in the mode Maxine did.
Simply the reason I tell you this story is not because of the reaction of the children that solar day, merely the reaction of parents. I said earlier I didn't even mention the first incident to Maxine's mum though I think if I had told her, her likely reaction would accept been to give Maxine a roasting for "not listening to her instructor!"
Only with these parents it was dissimilar. Within hours of the class getting back, I had over 20 parents outside my part demanding to know why this, that and the other had not been done, why hadn't we organised a charabanc [that is, a double-decker], why hadn't we "protected their children from the hazards of London transport?" All questions we could well answer, and did….
Hither'southward the end, which basically says that at present that the fear level is higher, schools must accommodate information technology. Â Of course, I think, "No, we must work to bring that level dorsum to reality — which is where it was 20 years ago!" Merely I don't run a school, and then that'due south piece of cake for me to say.
So I'g maxim it. – L.
What happens on a field trip when a educatee goes down the Tube?
Source: https://www.freerangekids.com/a-kid-gets-lost-on-a-field-trip-then-and-now/
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