Is it just me? School payment demands

deisemum

When I went on my school trip to Paris back in 1980 or 1981 one of the male teachers on the trip took the boys out to the red light district one night while the girls were supervised by the nuns

rainbowtrout

tfitzgerald wrote: »

P. s. I never new that the students had to subsidise the teachers on these trips now I know why 5 or 6 of them went to Paris

When you book a foreign school tour, a teacher place is given for every 8-10 students - it depends on the tour company I suppose. Do you think the teachers should pay for the trip and give up their holidays to bring away 40 students for 5 days? Sure, if I had to land out €400 to have the privilege of bringing 40 teenagers to Paris during my holidays why would I bother going on tour at all? I could just go on holidays with my friends for the same cost and not have the responsibility of a group of teenagers 24/7.

I haven't done a foreign tour for a couple of years but some of the stuff we've dealt with:

• rows between kids which meant that we needed to separate the students in question and change sleeping arrangements if they were originally meant to be sharing a room.
• constantly watching students to make sure they are not buying alcohol
• bag searches after any period of time where they have been shopping and may have had an opportunity to buy alcohol
• keep the boys out of the girls rooms, keeping the girls out of the boys rooms
• keeping boys from another tour group out of the rooms of our girls
• removing all phones (hotel phones) from all their rooms because reception were going cracked putting through calls half the night as students were ringing each other.
• spending half the night sitting on the floor in the corridor in the hotels we were staying in making sure students weren't getting out, making noise, disturbing other guests, hotel staff, moving between rooms.
• sitting out on a balcony making sure students weren't trying to climb from balcony to balcony
• dealing with sick kids, having a truckload of forms signed prior to going on tour stating what ailments each child has and what medication they have with them and what medication they can take. Remember teachers are not allowed to administer medication to students, so we have to tell them to bring their own. We can't give them as much as a dispirin.
• lost/stolen wallets. there's always one who ends up with no money.
• head counts about fifty times a day: every time you get on the tour bus, going into one of attractions on the itinerary, when an activity has finished, leaving the hotel, at the airport check in, at airport security, getting on the plane, passport control etc etc
• minding 40 passports because the students will lose them
• navigating public transport - making sure all students get on the train/bus/tube - and all manage to get off at the right station/stop. nightmare.
• contingency plans for the kid who misbehaves so a teacher has to remain behind with them while the others go and do some activity.
• no sleep for pretty much all of the tour because you're up half the night telling the kids to get back to bed, and up early the next morning to drag them out of bed.
• plenty of whining and moaning from a few students every year who think the cultural part of the tour is crap
• constant complaints about food. no matter what food is put in front of them they whinge.
• arguments with students because their parents have asked them to bring home duty free alcohol and cigarettes, naturally we can't have the students buying this stuff in case its for themselves: although we have found a workaround, in that the student buys it under our supervision, we take it off them and hand it directly to the parent when we get back home and that seems to work
• students who have been told to bring one small gear bag of stuff for the few days, and to keep it under a certain weight so they won't get charged for excess baggage- there are always a couple of students who turn up with two large suitcases of stuff, complain if they are charged and constantly whine because they have to carry their own heavy luggage around.

Do you think I should still pay my own way for 5 days of this?