Why Would Any Teacher Volunteer To Give Up Their Time For A School Trip? Here’s Why…
“In an instant, they ‘got it’” – Louise Cramp has some compelling arguments for taking students on residentials
- by Louise Cramp
It’s three days into a Year 7 activity week trip and I’ve reached a low point. The students are exhausted, the staff are sleep-deprived, there has been a stomach bug, a sprained ankle, a tea-related burn, and all of my pre-packed comfort-giving snacks have been consumed.
I am watching the students kit-up for their next activity, rock-climbing, and as a history teacher I am way out of my comfort zone. I am hoping that none of the students have noticed that I am not putting on my harness as I have no intention of attempting to climb that terrifyingly high-looking wall.
As I watch the students pair-up for their first climb, I start to wonder, why do teachers across the country willingly give up their evenings, weekends and precious free-time to organise and run trips?
The Colonel’s voice
As the first pair of students race up the wall, I begin to reflect on my own experiences, starting with the first residential trip that I ever organised, taking a particularly rambunctious group of Year 10 students to the D Day landing beaches in Normandy, accompanied by our guide, the imposing ex-serviceman Lieutenant-Colonel Anthony Langdon or ‘the Colonel’ as he quickly became known.
We were in Bénouville and Anthony had just told us the story of the brave men of the British 6th Airborne Division who at 00:16 hrs on 6th June, landed by parachutes and gliders east of the River Orne and the Caen Canal. The students listened quietly, they paid attention and even (grudgingly) re-enacted the ‘brace’ position that the men in the glider would have taken on impact. So far, so good.
Then we made our way to the Pegasus Bridge Memorial and a group of boys, who had so far been on their best behaviour, instantly spotted the army trucks and tanks on display and they made a beeline over to them, climbing up and sitting in the seats, much to the disapproval of the other visitors to the museum.
The Colonel instantly marched over to the group of boys and the disapproving visitors and I held my breath, waiting for the inevitable telling-off.
Instead, Anthony calmly explained that many of the young men who had given their lives in Normandy were not much older than our students, that they would have been doing exactly the same in this situation and would not for a second be bothered by our boys sitting in their vehicles.
In an instant, some of our most difficult boys ‘got it’. They understood the value of learning about WWII more clearly than I could ever communicate to them in the classroom. They were learning about the experiences of boys just like them.
Human history
Then there was the time that I took students from a variety of schools in the London Borough of Hillingdon to Normandy to commemorate Armed Forces Day, accompanied this time by three WWII veterans.
Initially the students were shy and awkward around these frail, wheelchair bound men. But as the days wore on, they watched as we were stopped by strangers, alerted to their veteran status by the presence of the glittering medals pinned to their chests; they stood on the landing beaches and gazed up at the sheer cliff-faces in admiration at the sheer difficulty of the task that these men undertook, and they started to ask questions.
By the end of the trip, there was a long queue of students wanting to proudly push our veterans in their wheelchairs along the beaches, and the age gap had all but been forgotten.
Then there are the many early morning flights to Poland and Germany, to bear witness to the horrors of the Holocaust in the concentration and death camps of WWII. The students can see on display the belongings stolen from the murdered victims, the piles of shoes and human hair, the keys, pots and shoe polish as evidence that the victims had once believed that they would survive.
We take them to the excellent Galicia Museum, where they hear the testimony of a survivor of these horrors and once again, students begin to have their expectations challenged. These men and women may be frail and old now, but it wasn’t always the case. They survived the most unimaginable horrors and slowly we start to re-humanise the six million victims of this terrible crime.
Every trip that I have ever organised has had one of these moments, there are simply too many to list. Which leads me back to activities week and my initial question about why we run trips. Ella has just reached the top of the climbing wall with the help and encouragement of her peers. Two days ago she was stuck on the high ropes, paralysed by fear. But she has conquered the wall, and the look on her face as she reaches the ground says it all.
Louise Cramp teaches history at Rickmansworth School, Hertfordshire, and received a 2017 Silver Pearson Teaching Award, for teacher of the year in a secondary school.
