School trips are a great learning opportunity for students to exit their comfort zone and experience something new, both about themselves and the world around them. For many of the kids, it may be the first time they’ve left their home city outside of a family vacation. To get the full educational experience and learning experience on their trip, they must feel free to be themselves. They need to feel free to be themselves, ask questions, and explore new things. Sometimes, having their parents there with them can hamper their ability to feel this freedom.
While you might have many parents excitedly volunteering to be parent chaperones on your school trips, it’s important to consider the effect this will have on the student’s educational experience. Here are a few things to consider when deciding if parents should be allowed to join your middle school or high school trip:
Helicopter vs. Hands-Off
Letting parent volunteers come on your trips can pose a tricky situation. No matter whether you’re taking a day trip on a school bus ride to a National Park or taking an overnight field trip on a plane across the country, you want your chaperones to have a good balance of supervision and letting kids be kids. Some parents might be more concerned with their own children and pay too much attention to them. Sometimes parents want so much to be the “cool mom or dad” that they don’t pay enough attention to their group. Either scenario can sour the experience for some or all of the students. Part of your job is to ensure safety while preserving your students’ space to explore the topic of your trip. You need to consider if having parents come along as chaperones will help you achieve this goal. Should you decide to let parents participate in your school trip, ensure that you set clear expectations and guidelines for how they should interact with and guide their group.
Main Motivations
When deciding whether or not to have parents on a trip, there is an important question to ask. Why does this parent want to come on the trip? Parental motivations can often tell you if allowing them on your trip is a good idea or not. Let’s consider two of the primary motivations parents have for wanting to go on a school trip:
- Do they want to help out and enjoy a fun adventure? If this is the case, they might be a great chaperone for the trip. A parent who wants to help out can be enormously useful in managing a trip. They can help decrease the burden on your shoulders and help the trip run more smoothly. But beware! Sometimes the desire to have fun might outweigh the desire to help out. It’s important that they realize this is not a vacation for them. Parents don’t always realize that the trips are designed around students and their attention spans. Often, you won’t be staying at a particular destination as long as the parent would like. Communicate early to ensure they’re willing to look to you as the trip leader and are willing to follow your instructions.
- Do they want to keep an eye on their own child? It’s perfectly normal for a parent to want to accompany their child on a school trip. Sometimes they just want to be there to see their son or daughter discover a new experience. Sometimes they want to share in that experience. If there’s too much focus on sharing the experience with their own child, it can sometimes stifle the student’s ability to experience things on their own.
It can also cause problems if the parent doesn’t trust their child or isn’t comfortable with them taking a trip to New York City or Washington D.C. for example, without them there. If that’s the case, they’re not likely to be ideal candidates. They will probably spend most of the time focused on their own child, ignoring the rest of the group and making it difficult for their child to enjoy all the fun of their school trips. It is not unusual for a parent to want to take their child away from the group to see something unique, visit family members, or eat a special meal. As you might imagine, this can have a detrimental effect on the trip experiences of other students.
All or Nothing?
While we’ve outlined a few of the potential issues you can have with bringing parents on a school field trip, we don’t want you to think they only cause problems! Having responsible adults along to help manage the students can be a game changer. They can help make a group more flexible (especially in dealing with issues that arise during the class trip), they can remove some of the pressure on a trip leader’s shoulders and can be helpful in building a good relationship between teachers and parents that serve both groups throughout the school year. So what other information can we share to help you make this crucial decision?
In a perfect world, you would be able to hand-pick which parents come along on the trip. If you are able to select only individuals that have your confidence, it can make this decision a no-brainer! But this can lead to a sticky situation where some parents are permitted, and others can’t help on the trip. It might be easier to adopt an all-or-nothing approach. Either you allow parents on the school trip or you don’t. If you open it up to any parents, you need to determine how many chaperones you need and devise a system for deciding who will come. Will it be first come first served? Will you allow anyone who is willing to pay to come along? (Note: One-to-one parent/child ratios are becoming increasingly common on trips these days, and while it might be tempting to allow it, that sort of ratio does not lend itself to an effective or enjoyable public school trip!)
- As you can see, there are some situations where having a parent on your school trip might not be so bad. Can you hand-pick which parents come, or is it an all-or-nothing situation?
- The easiest way to avoid a sticky situation is to take the all-or-nothing approach. Either you allow parents on the school trip, or you don’t.
- You can tell the parents how many volunteers you need and devise a system for deciding who will come.
- Could be first come, first served. Based on merit, based on availability, etc.
Our Recommendation
Our recommendation is to invite parents on your tour, but only if you have standards in place. Consider working with your school principal on this form. Inviting staff members, school administrators, and even school board members is a way to balance your trip between parents who are used to working with their kids and adults who are used to working with larger groups of students. Before inviting parents to help chaperone your tour, create a chaperone code of conduct (Kind of like a permission slip). That includes but is not limited to:
- Learn the school rules and expectations for a chaperone. Chaperones are there to help, not to socialize.
- A master list of students and cellphone numbers, disabilities, and bringing a first aid kit for possible allergies.
When speaking to the parents, be sure that they agree to the following:
- Be on their best behavior.
- Be ready for anything.
- Are ready to entertain.
- Don’t forget to care for yourself.
- Last but not least, have fun!
Starting trip planning is easy when you have a knowledgeable partner. At GL Travel, we help teachers create memorable experiences for their students without any of the hassle or stress. Contact us today to see what we can do for you!
