Rock Museum Field Trip

Hello, my name is Sarah and I am not a field-trip mom. I really want to be, I've tried to be, but, I'm not.

Today was Miss E's class field trip to the Rock Museum and she begged me to go as a chaperone. Against my better judgement, I said yes. The truth is, I HATE going on field trips. The kids are always crazy, the bus rides are long and loud and by the end of it I'm the not-fun mom who is telling everyone to "quit it" and I walk away with a migraine. It's not my thing. I love volunteering in the classroom, working with kids on art projects and reading and math and I do that all the time but the field trip thing? No.

I think it comes down to the fact that (and yes, this means I would be a terrible teacher) I have gone to great lengths to teach my kids to behave at museums and such and frankly I don't want to be saddled with some kid in my group who's parents haven't done that. Now that same kid sitting down and reading with him at school for 30 minutes? Love it. Working with 2 or 3 of them on a math concept? I'd do that every day. Telling him repeatedly not to touch things he's just been told not to and stay with the group? Negative.

This was clearly a case where I said yes to Miss E and I shouldn't have. It was a bad judgement call on my part but I had a moment of weakness, which is how I found myself on a bus this morning with 75 riled up 1st and 2nd graders heading out for an hour long drive to a rock museum. It was not pretty. And I felt kind of bad about the entire thing later in the afternoon after my migraine meds kicked in. I really should have said no. It's not fun for Miss E to go on a trip with me when I'm not having a good time and it's not fun for me either. Not to give the impression that it was terrible, because it wasn't. It just wasn't that much fun. In hindsight, this is one I could have gracefully bowed out of pretty easily. There were 15 parents who wanted to go and only 5 spots, so someone could have easily taken my place but I didn't. Lesson learned.

Well...lesson learned on a delay schedule. Later this month I am going on a field trip with Mr. T's class simply because there weren't enough parents to go on it so as the room mom I kind of have to go. This one will be shorter and have fewer kids on it so I think it will be easier.

But from now on, I swear, I am the work in the classroom parent and PETER is the field-trip parent. Because he, for some crazy reason, prefers them to working in the classroom.

Oh the migraine though...it was a doozy.