School Trips

Team #maternityteacher have just come back from our first family weekend away to the Peak District which was the most fun, and it got me thinking about how awesome parental leave is because of all the flexi-time it offers. On Friday, when all other teaches were in the classroom, baby, Frenchie and I were zooming up the M1 to the countryside, and I thought, 'Gosh, it's great being on maternity leave - I'd never be able to do all of this learning-outside-the-classroom if I was on full teaching timetable and restricted by contracted hours!'

Now, for anyone reading thinking that maternity leave is a holiday, it is not: this was not a mini break, this was a bonafide CPD school trip. Had I been on a full time pay roll, I would definitely have put in an expense claim - that's how linked to my teaching and learning practice this was, as it was inspired by my FutureLearn course, 'Literature of the Country House'.  The course includes excerpts from 'Pride and Prejudice', 'The Sylph' and 'The Mysteries of Udolpho', all which have links to Derbyshire in the form of that dramatic rock that Kiera Knightly stands on in the film; Chatsworth House, home to both Mark Darcy and Georgiana Cavendish (also Kiera Knightly), and Haddon Hall, the gothic inspiration for Ann Radcliffe's 'Udolpho'.

School trips like this absolutely count as CPD for the exact same reason that they count as learning for our students - they bring learning and texts and theory to life and make them so much more exciting; they develop soft skills like determination and organisation and confidence; they inspire ideas to bring back into the classroom, and they provide opportunities that teenagers and teachers both love for awesome, no-inhibitions, dream-fulfilling photos:

I am Lizzie Bennet.  This is her rock.  Jane Austen lives through me etc.

Having returned from this trip, for example, I am now completely convinced that I can accompany a DofE trek, a commitment I have previously hesitated over volunteering for because of a concern that I might not be outdoorsy enough - such things are for Geography and PE teachers, surely?  Well, not any more.

In a previous trip to the Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences in Cambridge, I spent about an hour pondering climate change and my insignificance in the gazillion-year-old scheme of things, and am now on the hunt for copies of the letters of Mary Anning, Darwin's diaries, Adam Sedgwick's letters and Thomas Hawkins' 'The Book of the Great Sea Dragons' to create a portfolio of Literary Non-Fiction and Literary Fiction like 'A Sound of Thunder' and 'Journey to the Centre of the Earth' to create a portfolio with a cool name like 'Dinosaur Hunters' that will make exam practice feel like a trip to the cinema to see 'Jurassic World'.

One thing, from a parental point of view, that has been really fun, has been basing these trips on whatever the baby is supposed to be doing, developmentally.  There's a point, for example, when babies go into sensory overload, so we went to Kew Gardens to smell (I learnt a lot about bees and want our Science Department to do a trip here), St. Martin-in-the-Fields to listen, the V&A to look at shadows (amazing STEM opportunities) and put our feet in the cold water of the courtyard pond, and Borough Market to eat all the free tasters.  When the baby started to make connections and appreciate patterns, we went to the Tate Modern with my Mum and I wrote a whole scheme of work on Shakespeare, dance and physical theatre.

What has also been fantastic about a lot of these London-based trips (I work in a London school), has been the opportunity to act almost as a travel agent for my Head of Department, letting her know about experiences that I have already tried and tested, and which would be suitable for different groups of students.  As a busy manager, she doesn't have as much time as she would like to get out, discover, research and test drive these school trips, so having someone who will do this for her - and have a lot of fun, cuddles and tea in the process - is a huge bonus for her.