Back in the old'en days!

Yesterday, the fourth graders at my school ventured out to the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum. I was well prepared and knew my class would be well-behaved.

We started out seeing an IMAX movie about Texas, which I really enjoyed. I sat next to Victor during this movie, which I also really enjoyed. He seemed to love the movie and also asking me which city every clip was of. After the IMAX, we had some time to view the exhibit before lunch. My kids broke off into their groups and went to work on their assignments. (Yes, they had an assignment!) There were specific parts of the exhibit that they had to answer questions about or compare to another part. As the teacher, I took the most difficult group of kids. They aren't necessarily badly behaved, but this group of kids tends to get over excited and that affects their behavior in a negative way. I took these guys for myself so I wouldn't have to later get onto them for not listening to the chaperons.

Overall, the reports from the chaperons were all wonderful! The kids were very well-behaved, followed the agreements we made about behavior in a museum, and represented our school positively. Now, we were not the only school at the museum. There was a school from another city who must have not discussed museum etiquette. While I had my group looking at part of an exhibit, this other group of kids pushed their way in front of my class and was grabbing everything. They were also running around other places and yelling loudly. I once asked them to not yell, but it was ineffective. I would have been completely embarrassed if it was my class behaving in that manner. In the same respect, I do understand the struggles of managing all of them and am grateful that I didn't have to take last year's class to the museum. Regardless...if my kids had behaved like that, we would have sat in the lobby instead.

We are taking one more field trip later this year and I am very excited about it. We head to a Christmas Tree Farm that sets up "A Little Bit of Texas Tour" for 4th graders about Texas settlements. My favorite part is the tetherball at lunch time...this is when I get to show all these 4th graders how to REALLY play tetherball. I should tell them to start practicing now.