Every year, we always take our school group to Lincoln’s Boyhood Home as our first field trip. It’s our shortest field trip and it’s close enough to home so that if we have any really severe issues, we can get back to town without a lot of trip engineering.

It also gives us a full field trip that is familiar enough that we have time to examine the following could be problems: general behavior of the children, who is going to react negatively to the bus, food prep problems, and length of day.

Every year, we notice and make notes about which children can’t and won’t follow directions, line up, use a bathroom when directed, or which ones won’t or don’t know how to eat a sandwich.

For the most part, the children are wonderfully behaved. Our children are expected to play with each other without aggressive punches, pinches, pushes or tattling. We expect our children to say “thank you, please, and no thank you.” We expect our children to stand in lines when required without shouting or making fun of standing in line. We expect our children to be quiet when necessary and always walk indoors. When in a public place, we expect our children to represent not only their homes, but their school.

The worst problem we usually encounter is the older children who bring their big school bad manners to us. We always re-enroll the older siblings of present students and potential students because it’s good business sense.  Older children can and often do help younger ones, add to the discovery of successful field trips for younger children, and show the littles how to.

I always use my grandchildren as a guide to what I expect from older children. My grandkids are 12, 9, and 6, all boys, and have outgrown the GS, but come every year on our field trips because their mother works for the GS. I never even know they are among the children. They ask for nothing, are delighted with whatever they get, and know how to respond positively and politely to any and all situations. Each one is an honors student at school.

And every year, the older children remind us of how firmly we enforce the kind of behavior that separates children whose schools and parents make demands and whose schools and parents who don’t. Sometimes a returnee will be brought up short if he or she has strayed too far from the good manner line. This is our job.

One of our tactics is to watch the lunch routine. My favorite “oops” is to watch those children who throw their lunch on the ground under another child’s place and then come to the teachers and ask for chips, or something they “want” to eat. Our reply is always the same, “If you throw your sandwich on the ground, first you pick it up and tell us it has dropped. Then you get a second sandwich to eat. If you don’t eat that one, if it mysteriously falls on the ground, you’re done. If you finish your lunch, you can have the same privileges that all the other eaters get.” It always solves the problem one way or another.

At the first field trip, we make a list of those children who can’t manage to eat on their own. These are the kids who take a sandwich to a table and put it down and try to do anything but eat. These are the children who find their new place at a special table monitored by a teacher. They have lost the independent prize of being a big kid and choosing where they want to eat.

Does it really matter? When a child passes on breakfast because he’s excited about the trip, and then passes on lunch because he’s excited about getting back to play, there is a nutrition problem. He might not eat again until snack, and that’s too long. So it does matter for the health and safety of the child.

One of the problems we encountered yesterday was a disrespect for other people’s property, and a general disrespect about what we were doing and why. When a person goes to an historic site to visit, it’s a visit to look, listen, and try to understand. When a child’s primary response is to act as if this whole thing is a joke, then the reigns must be pulled up tightly, and being able to know which children can be taken without this disrespect, and which children must be temporarily separated from the group and monitored by a teacher is the goal of the first field trip.

This summer we will be going to an historic place, two science museums, a zoo, a nature preserve, and five lakes. In order to manage children who push, pinch, punch, act disrespectfully toward what we are doing, or disregard the property of others, a firmness about who and what we are needs to be established quickly. The result of any poor behavior will be to sit at the entrance of the activity with yours truly and watch how the well behaved children act…as a lesson. It’s a good life lesson, and one I’m very willing and eager to teach.

Taking children on long and exciting field trips every week is my pleasure and my invention. The idea of staying in town and playing put put golf or going to the same miserable playgrounds all summer with a thousand children is about as exciting as watching TV all day. But at the same time, it’s the privilege of well behaved children to enjoy these places, and these trips without the embarrassment of those who bring bad manners from home or other schools as their example.

It’s going to be a fine summer. Next trip is the Exotic Feline Rescue Center in Brazil, Indiana. Let’s see who sits at the entrance with Miss Judy.