Field trips

This actually happened on Monday/Tuesday, but I didn't write about it that night and then forgot throughout the course of the week. I only remembered this morning, at small group, when we were supposed to share a way we've seen God working in our lives this week.

On Tuesday, we took a field trip to the Constitution Center. Because my school is located so near Center City, we decided to take the subway to avoid the cost of renting a bus. The downside is this: imagine one teacher, one parent, and 19 kids on a subway together. Needless to say, my stomach was a little queasy on Monday night. So I prayed. "God, I'm giving this to you. This trip is in YOUR hands. These kids' lives are in YOUR hands. I'm giving all responsibility to You."

Secretly, I was hoping that a) half of my kids would stay home, b) 4 random chaperones would show up unexpectedly, or c) some combination of the two. Then my phone rang. It was one of my students, asking where the Constitution Center was. She said her mom was thinking about meeting us there. I gave her directions, but began complaining almost before I hung up the phone. Her mother has NEVER shown up for anything-- not back to school night, not open house, not report card conferences. A couple times she's even called, yelling at me about something I've done or not done, swearing she's going to be "up at that school" the next day to complain, and has still never actually shown up. It made me angry that she would get her daughter's hopes up (and her daughter WAS really, really excited that her mom might come) if she wasn't actually going to come.

The morning of the trip, 5 of my 19 students are absent. One stayed home because he wasn't allowed to go on the trip. One had a dentist appointment. One student's mom was having a baby. I don't know where the other two were. Two students didn't bring permission slips, so I put them in other classrooms for the day. That left a total of 12 students and two adults, including myself, going on the trip. Very manageable.

We made it to the Constitution Center without incident. Nobody ran in front of a car while walking to the subway. Nobody fell onto the tracks. Everyone successfully transferred from the first train to the second. My co-teacher went inside to pay, and I waited outside with our classes. I was pretty relaxed, enjoying the weather and being able to just "hang out" with my students. Then one student- the girl who had called me the night before-- ran off. I started to yell for her to come back, or send another student to chase her, when I saw her reach and consequently hug an adult. Her mom had actually shown up. She took a group of students with her, alleviating some of my responsibility. She bought them things. She stayed with my class for the entire day. And the student loved every second of it.

It was a reminder, for me, of how God works-- he didn't just provide an additional chaperone, he provided an "impossible" chaperone: the one parent I had not met this year, the parent I did not believe would ever show up.