Our Trip Part I

Well, it's certainly been a while since my last post and for this I apologize. I guess that if you teach you know how things can go from calm to hectic in 3.2 seconds. That is exactly the way my life has been in recent months. That is also something that teachers of living history need to keep in mind when developing a program.

When my colleague, Ed, and I decided to create a living history program, we thought that it should really not take up much of our time at all. Ed has been doing living history for about 3 years now and I thought it would be pretty easy for me to jump in and get a club going. Was that ever an optimistic thought! What we though would be no big deal has turned into a very time-consuming, albeit, rewarding process during which we have managed to take 13 high school students into the field for a day as Revolutionary War soldiers.

What we've learned thus far I'd like to share with you now. Perhaps the most important thing that I've learned in the last 6 months is that you never have enough time to plan and organize a program like this. It is literally never to early to start the planning process and thinking about what it is that you want to do and what it is that you need to do. Maybe it won't work for all, especially in this digital age, but I have learned that I need to make lists and stay on top of the lists. Lists for what? Everything!! We needed to make sure we had all of the proper paperwork done and in on time to the district for approval and that by itself will often require multiple lists of things to accomplish. Why multiple? Because I found that there are numerous hoops to jump through and ancillary hoops that not only need to be jumped through, but jumped through again. Be sure that you keep a list of what you have done and what you need to do. In addition, be sure to keep copies of everything. We found that at the last second, our paperwork had been mislaid and the trip was in jeopardy just a couple of days before our departure date.

Because our paperwork was not forthcoming from the district, and because the weather was working against us (heavy rains & lightning predicted) we also neglected to put together a list for the attendance office of what students would be with us. The result of this little oversight resulted in one unhappy parent, numerous cut classes for the students with us and a phone call to the Attendance Office by the above mentioned parent who also said that a call to the principal was in order. All of these headaches could have been avoided had we been better prepared.

I will say that we absolutely dropped the ball as far as attendance was concerned, but we did manage to secure the bus back in October for an April trip. That was a huge sigh of relief for us as we would not have had the transportation paperwork in on time otherwise. For our next planned trip, we will have the paperwork in this June for next September/October. Of course that is our plan and we all know about the "best laid plans of mice and men...."

I will post again in the very near future and continue to recount what we did right and not so right for this trip. In the meantime, I would like to just say once again that the key to any trip of this nature is in the pre-planning stages. Remember: You never have enough time!

Until next time,

Pete K