Glennalicious

She didn't give out the permission slips to the classes until the day before, so many good kids didn't have time to get permission. All of the bad kids with multiple suspensions had already been given the slips, as they cut classes and hang out in her room. She didn't get the right number of buses, so about ten good kids didn't get to go. The two head teachers of the trip neglected to get an accurate head count before we left, and I discovered four kids on the trip without permission slips. Because of her lack of organization, we were almost two hours late leaving the school.

Once on the bus, we discovered that we should have provided our own videos. They told the counselor a few weeks back, but she forgot. When we were kids, we didn't need TV to entertain us, but this is a scary new generation. Lots of problems on the bus, as many of the special ed students were allowed on the trip, but the counselor hadn't allowed the special ed teachers to join.

Not to pick on the world's dumbest counselor, but she also didn't do the tickets correctly, so four teachers had to pay to get into the park. I always bring emergency cash, so I was one of them. I was saddled with too many students, including the special ed students. The bilingual teachers refused to take any extra students, which meant I was saddled with 15 students while each of them had 6.

The special ed students ran away once we were in the park, so I was stuck searching for them, as they didn't know when we were leaving. My other kids were great, so we just checked in periodically. I finally found the wandering boys trying to get on another ride at the departure time and hauled their butts back to the bus.

I should have let them ride the rollercoaster, as the bilingual teachers ignored the deadline and were 90 minutes late returning to the bus. Since we never made a list or headcount leaving the school, we were just hoping that we had departed with the same number of students. At that point, severed bits of one of our students could be floating down the log ride, and we would have left.

The trip back was in peak traffic with a full bus of sugared students. Many had skipped lunch and had only eaten candy. One of the special ed students with a speech issue kept screaming out "Kingda Ka!" for over 45 minutes. Students that normally lose focus after 2 minutes were entranced by the shrieking, dancing boy the entire time.

I finally had to get off the bus as we were heading through Manhattan. The bus would have been the quicker route home at that point, but it was also the quicker route to insanity.