The Murray Family: Final Field Trip

Originally written 6/2/12

I am lucky enough to work for a school that encourages field trips. They told me that when they hired me, and in the week of training I went to before school actually started. And I took them up on it. The 7th graders in my school have gone on more field trips than any of the other three grades combined, and I'm not shy in saying that I'm the reason. I love field trips. I love taking the kids out of school and going on adventures. I love planning them. I like making everything work together and organizing payments and buses and coordinating with the venues... I like the power :)
For this final field trip of my first year of teaching, I wanted to have fun--but obviously I wanted to tie in the curriculum as well. So we went to the Olympic Oval to go ice skating (get it, Utah Studies, 2002 Olympics...) and then we went to the Clark Planetarium--because we could.
When I originally thought about going ice skating, I never considered that I was proposing taking 180 7th graders, only a few of them having any ice skating experience, to slide around on an extremely slippery surface with sharp blades on their feet.
After we finished helping 180 students tighten their laces and actually got on the ice, I realized two things: one, I haven't ice skated in a long, long time; and two, 7th graders are crazy--and there were a lot of them. Luckily, only two injuries occured (yes, the paramedics came, and yes, I was the "head teacher" so I had to sign off the medical release papers that I hope don't ever come up again). All in all it was a really fun experience. Michael was able to come and had fun showing off his skills and playing the photographer too.
We then drove downtown to The Gateway where we ate lunch by the water fountain (In the Olympic Park!) and then walked to the Planetarium where the kids had about 45 minutes to explore the exhibits and then we watched "Into the Arctic: 3D" in IMAX. It was good, but seriously, if they told me one more time that people were killing the Arctic with our greenhouse gases and making polar bears eat each other--I was going to scream. (And if the male polar bears ever really caught the baby polar bears and traumatize my 7th graders I would have been fired.) Luckily for my sanity and my job, it was overall a fun movie and no baby polar bears were injured.
Enjoy these pictures!