Adventure Week – Indonesia
I’ve just returned from a week of adventure — our school’s annual field trip designed to instill leadership and daring into our student body.
As a young teacher, this is a difficult week. There are many personality dynamics to manage: nationality, student & teacher, teacher & teacher, and student & student. Not to mention the guides, the locals, the airport authorities, and the school administrators.
Personally, this is a difficult week because I prefer to have a certain amount of personal space every day, but this trip does not provide that and I find myself rapidly becoming short with people and then expend energy being patient. Most challenging of all, this trip started on the first day of the fall break, meaning that I was running on vapors by the time I got to Indonesia.
So here’s what I did to get through:
- The students loved this trip and I reminded myself to focus on student needs rather than my own.
- Sought compromise.
- Wrote in a journal.
- Maintained a flexible attitude.
- Sought sincerity.
- Played volleyball during free time.
- Reminded myself that the relationships I was building with the students would help me as a teacher.
- Said ‘Indonesia’ the way Tom Waits does on “What’s He Building” from Mule Variations.
I can’t say that I was perfect, but I know that I’ll have a trip again next year, so I hope that I’ll improve from this beginning.
A couple tricks that I picked up from the teacher that will help:
- An ongoing joke can build identity.
- Let students stay up a little later on the last night.
- Amusing and consistent consequences.
- Try to solve student problems no matter how ridiculous they may sound.
