The other day , Steve Shadows and Light from mentioned a field trip he took students on and the final comment was at least he didn't lose any!
Well, over my 37 years of teaching I probably went on a couple hundred field trips with students. Field trips were on the stressful side for teachers but they could be excellent learning situations.
However, unlike Steve, I did lose two students. Both losses were about the same time.
One time the local hospital had something they thought kids should see and invited us for a short visit. It had some relation to out health program. We had seven classes to take and it was a short tight time schedule. The kids had to go down, tour and be back in one period. Did I say it was a tight schedule.
Well on one of the trips Rob was missing when the bus was loaded and we were ready to go back. I left without Rob as I would be back in 20 minutes. When I got back to the school Rob's Mom had already phoned the school with apologies. Rob had an aunt who worked in the hospital and he had popped in to see her. Once Rob found out he'd been left, he phoned his Mom to tell her he was in trouble. All was rectified and at Rob's expense there was a lot of ribbing.
The second loss had the potential to be much more serious. We took 36 kids on a back pact trip to the Rocky Mountains. We parked the bus at a trail head that gave us two hikes. First we went right from the bus to a beautiful little mountain lake about two km away. We had lunch and then went back, past the parked bus and to another small mountain lake about 2 km away from the bus.
On the way back a no-no happened. David asked a volunteer supervisor if he could walk ahead to the bus. The volunteer said sure. David took off like a rocket. David went by the bus that was behind trees and walked to the first lake we had visited. We loaded the bus and counted. One student was missing and a check of the list told us David was missing. The volunteer was sharp enough to tell us what had happened. We put two and two together and hoped that David had missed the bus and gone back to the first lake. Two of us were runners so we ran towards the first lake we visited. Yes , we soon found David on his way back.
Now in David's case this could have been very serious as we were in wilderness country and if he'd gone off the trail it would have been very serious.
So I lost two students. Everybody was safe and we learned from the experience.
