Thursday was a long-awaited field trip for my students. As an ESL teacher in a 7-12 school, I am in the unique position of teaching the same core group of students year after year, and so we all get to know each other pretty well. At the beginning of each school year, they always ask me if we’re going to go on a field trip and I always start out with good intentions, but invariably I get caught up in the day to day duties of my job and I haven’t necessarily been a good teacher as far as field trips have been concerned.

This year I made a promise to myself that we’d take at least one, and I wanted to make it a good one, so I planned a long day trip to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island with my students. We took the two-plus hour journey into the city on Thursday, April 7th and it was a great experience.

My students and I are very much like a family. We have fun together. We learn together. We argue and make up together. All of the personalities in the group are well defined and every single person has their place within the unit, and so the trip was more like a family outing than your typical school field trip.

Once we arrived in the city, we walked across Battery Park towards the streets in search of lunch, and that was where the real fun began. Perched on a pedestal near the entrance to the park stood Lady Liberty herself. She was one of those neo-peddlers who earn their wares dressed up as statues and posing for pictures with unsuspecting tourists. Of course this one was decked out in a green robe and crown.

Once the kids spotted her the cameras came out. They started clicking away as some of them made their way towards the figure to be in the photos. Lady Liberty wagged her finger in a no-no motion…she wanted money. Two of my students, Jaqi and Sonia, went to pose for a picture with the figure. Jaqi hadn’t noticed the finger wagging, and from my vantage point I could see Jaqi arguing with the statue. Within seconds, she pulled out a $5 bill and the cameras got busy again. The two of them went into model shoot mode as Lady Liberty struck funny poses for the cameras. A couple of other students got into the action and laughter was everywhere. It would be the first bit of genuine fun we’d get from the day.




After a quick lunch at Burger King, we had to head back towards the ferry to catch our boat. On the way, some of the kids were drawn to the many street vendors stationed on the sidewalk. As I crossed the street back towards the park, I turned back to see that some of the students had stopped to peruse the tables. The other teacher was with them, so I wasn’t worried about, but I knew we didn’t have much time to catch the ferry.

“C’mon, we’ve gotta catch the ferry!” I shouted back at the shopping students.

“We’re coming, we’re coming!…Ooh, Mr. Myers,” Sonia said, “look what I got.” She proceeded to show me the ten rings that she had bought from a costume jewelry peddler down the street. All I could do was roll my eyes and move on as I lead a dash to the ferry terminal. In the end, we missed the boat, the first of three we’d miss.

Even though the little shopping spree took us off our schedule, I took it in stride and just enjoyed every minute. We went to Liberty Island to see the real statue, where we had a group picture done and then went up inside the pedestal. A trip to the gift shop was the culprit for us missing our second ferry, and we ended up staying on the island until almost three o’clock, the time we were supposed to meet the bus driver at Battery Park…and we still had to make a stop at Ellis Island.



After a quick call to the driver, we hopped on the next ferry and sailed over to Ellis, where we’d only have a half an hour. We skipped the bulk of the museum and headed straight for the famous “Wall of Immigrants.” The kids did some etchings on the wall before we headed back to the ferry, which we ended up missing too. Another half-hour’s wait and we were finally headed back to where we started from. Soon we were on our way back to school.



All in all, the day was great fun. During the long ride back, some kids slept, others did homework, while still others had some more fun together. Without prodding from me, they all pitched in to clean the bus before we got back to the school. That’s the kind of kids they are. They made me proud throughout the day. We pulled into the school parking lot around 8PM and the long day was over.

The kids came in to school Friday morning exhausted and exhilarated, just like I was feeling. Many of them thanked me for the day, and I reciprocated. I had as much fun with them as they had with me and I feel honored to have given them a memorable day that they’ll keep in their minds for years to come. I love my job!

Here are some photos from the day:























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I’m always happy when Monday is over. Getting past that very first ‘hump’ of the week is always a little bit of a relief for some reason. Any way you cut it, I’ve got a short week anyway…for a few days now they had been predicting more snow for Tuesday night into Wednesday (on some accounts I even heard up to another two feet). So even before the week started I had ‘snow day’ on my mind for Wednesday.

That’s all changed now, as today’s deep freeze (yes, it was COLD out there today!) is supposed to disappear tomorrow, bringing rain instead. So a snow day is unlikely, but that’s okay, because I’ve still got a conference on Friday and I not only get to miss a day of school, but I have an opportunity to do some serious networking for a new job, the newest focus in my quest for big changes.

Diets Stink



I’ve written in the past about how I hate the word “diet” (check it out here) and a visit to my mother’s for dinner last night further solidified my feelings. You see, my mom and my two sisters have been on the ever popular Weight Watchers diet since the New Year, and I had a chance to see it all in action firsthand. My sister made macaroni and meatballs for dinner, a Sunday staple for many an Italian family, and I’m glad I didn’t have to do all of that measuring and counting.

Within moments of sitting down at the table, the measuring cups and notepads were taken out in preparation for the ritual they must go through every time they wish to consume any type of food.

“How many points if I put cheese on my macaroni?” my mom asked my sister.

“I’m not sure, let me check…”

And so went the meal. I was stunned and saddened at how anyone could suffer this way through life and knew deep inside that this diet, like all diets are doomed to eventual failure. How could anyone make this a daily ritual for a lifetime? After dinner, my point was proven as mom was tallying her daily points while my sister was counting pretzels, her dessert.

“Ann, I did alright today, only…”

“Ma,” my sister was angry. “I lost count and now I gotta start all over again.”

The frustration was evident. If only they could see the truth about dieting. Oh boy, this one’s definitely worthy of a YCN article. Stay tuned…

A Cool Quarter Mil



Today I penned my 500th article for Associated Content/Yahoo Contributor Network, which is pretty significant, though I’m not as excited about that milestone as I am for another impending one. You see, within a few days I will have achieved a quarter of a million page views on my articles. That’s 250,000! Though I knew it was coming, it’s approaching a lot faster than I had imagined.

I must have been using really good SEO (for those of you not in the know, SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization) on some recent articles because my page views have risen dramatically of late. I remember when I hit 100,000 page views and I wrote an article to commemorate the occasion. A fellow writer who’s a lot more seasoned than me burst my bubble by pointing out that my pieces averaged around 280 page views each, which is not really optimal.

With the recent surge in page views and more consistent, quality writing, I have attained a page view average of almost 500 and I’ll be hitting that quarter million by the end of the month, for sure. I hadn’t projected that to happen until the end of February, so a big HOORAH for me!

Life Lessons in the Classroom



Today was a good day at school, and possibly another opportunity for a YCN piece. Every week, on Mondays, I give my students a question of the week, which they have a few days to think about and answer in their journals. Sometimes it’s hard to think of new questions that are worthy of thought provoking answers and so I often use the people around me for suggestions.

Last weekend, I asked him (I think I might have to give him a moniker soon!) if he could think of something I could ask my students, and he gave me a good one which I took off with and made into an entire week’s worth of lessons. The question I ended up using ended up something like this: “If you could grant a wish to someone, what wish would you grant, who would you grant it to and why?”

On the way to work last Monday, I was thinking of a fellow writer named Maria Roth. Maria has a daughter, Audrey, who’s been fighting leukemia for more than a year now. I’ve come to know Audrey’s story pretty well thanks to Maria’s candid, yet tender articles about her bout with the deadly disease. Well, Maria’s family was recently given a trip to Disney, which Maria proudly shared with her readers. The story got me thinking of the wonderful Make A Wish Foundation and I decided to have my students take a look at some of the stories of the children who’ve been recipients of wishes from the charity.

To make a long story short, the idea behind researching some of these heartrending and uplifting stories was to give my students fodder for their journals and boy did it work! This afternoon, they each shared stories they had been following on the Foundation’s website and read their journal answers to the class. Needless to say there were tears (mostly on my part, sap that I am!) and lots and lots of interest in what they were doing. It was one of those moments that made me very proud of what I do!



Christopher James Grecius, The Make A Wish Foundation's very first wish recipient.


Well I think I’ve said enough for one day! As always, thanks for reading and I look forward to sharing again soon!

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