My class had a field trip on Friday to the China Post, and what I thought could have been a really great experience for my children, ended up being a total disappointment. First of all, I was completely left out of the loop with the field trip. I think it is rude and disrespectful, but Morgan doesn’t feel the need to tell the American teachers important details like field trip information. He tells the Chinese teachers all about it and they are expected to plan everything, but they don’t share the information and so I am completely lost. All that I knew was we were going on a field trip to China post sometime in March. I did not even know that I date had been set until parents started sending back the permission slips (that I did not even know were sent out in the first place).
So when I inquired about the plan for the field trip, I was told that the children were going to see the mail being sorted, and a Postal worker was going to explain the mail process. Then our children were going to send post cards home. Prior to going on the field trip, I talked to my kids about the post office and we talked about mail and letters and the mailboxes at our houses. However, since I cannot teach an emergent curriculum, that was the extent of out Post Office experience in class, but I had high hopes for the field trip.
Here is how the field trip went down. My class of eighteen preschoolers, and another class of ten kindergarteners, six teachers, two secretaries, one school nurse and four bus drivers embarked on the journey to the China Post Office. We arrived at a large concrete building, similar to all of the other buildings. It was all completely open, no doors and pretty dirty. Not exactly what I expected for a government building (not even in China). We lined our kids up and lead them into the back where the workers sorted the mail. It was a large room that was really cluttered. The workers were not sorting mail; instead they were all standing around just staring at the children.
The rest of the field trip was a series of photographs. First, our children got in a line and Ms. Qian set up a table with a stack of mail and news papers and posed each child in front of it. It was an assembly line – grab a child, take a picture, push them along, next. Then the children went into the next line where they got to stamp an envelope with the Postal Seal as the teachers took pictures. Then the children got into line and got to sit on a postal motorcycle that delivered the mail and take a picture. Then we took the kids outside and we took their picture in front of the mail van. Then we went around front to the inside of the building and took their picture inside. Finally, the kids each had their picture taken in front of the big mailbox while posing with a letter, pretending to put it into the mailbox. After that, we got back on the bus, headed back for school.
During this whole time, I was so focused on the dirty old Postal workers that were looking at and talking about my children. They kept trying to touch them, or pick them up and I was freaking out. Shannon (the other American teacher) and I were the only ones focused on the children, while ever other adult was focused on taking pictures – trying to keep them out of trouble.
Never once did any of the postal workers talk to the kids to tell them about what goes on in the Post Office, or how mail is delivered or anything. In between children getting their picture taken at each station, they just stood and waited (bored, I am sure). And the worst part was that the children did not get to make post cards or send them, even though I was told that they would. Had I know that, I would have spent the time in my class writing letters or postcards so that each child could send something while we were at the Post Office. I feel like it completely defeated the purpose of going there, and I am not sure if I can tell you one outcome of the field trip.
Once back at school, I sat down with my children in a whole group to recap on the Post Office. I asked me kids, “What did we see at the Post Office?” The things that my children recalled were ridiculous. Of course they all loved sitting on the motorcycle, but none of them had any idea what the motorcycle was there for. A couple of them remember seeing the stray dog that ran into the sorting room while we were in there. Sadly, none of them could recall words like mail, newspaper, mailbox, mail truck, or postman – then again, none of those words were even mentioned to them once at the field trip.
I feel like an entire day was wasted, and I told Morgan how much of a disappointment it was to subject my children to such a meaningless experience. Of course, he said that it was the Chinese’s teachers fault because they were supposed to plan something, but the Chinese teachers claim that Morgan was only concerned with them taking as many pictures as possible for the parents. We have another field trip at the end of this month to Carrefor (a large grocery store), and I told him that unless he allows me to plan activities or I get a detailed list of the activities planned by the Chinese teachers, I will not be taking my children on the field trip to only run wild around a grocery store taking pictures – meaninglessly!
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