Field trips aren't a perk of my job they're just stressful
By Sissy15
@sissy15 (12431)
United States
June 7, 2025 3:10am CST
Something I often hear about my job as a paraprofessional at an elementary school is that it must be a perk to go on field trips. I can assure you I do not enjoy field trips. I'd almost rather spend the day at school. Field trips are stressful. I work with probably one of the most difficult grades at the school I work at. There are so many crazy behaviors. I work with one of the biggest groups in the school and they are one of the most difficult grades to work with because out of over 70 kids in the grade we have maybe ten that can actually behave. Now imagine having 70 children on a field trip where most of them don't listen and having to deal with constant behavior issues.
Typically, field trips rely heavily on parents but after our last experience with parents on field trips, we decided we would just deal with the current adults we had at the school and invite a few of our reading specialists. Our last field trip most of the parents were terrible. They didn't watch the kids and actually caused more issues than they helped with. It definitely explained why a lot of our kids are the way they are. We mostly have two types of parents for the kids in our grade (with some exceptions of course) the parents who spoil their kids and think they do no wrong and refuse to make their kids listen and the type of parents who completely neglect their kids and when they do decide to parent it's usually way too harsh. These parents send their kids to school where their child has no clue how to act because they don't have parents who teach them how to act. I have met most of these kids parents and while some of them seem nice enough they have no clue how to make their children mind. I feel like a lot of parents are maybe overcompensating for their own childhoods where they may have had too strict of parents and want to give their children everything they didn't have and thus spoiling them or we have those parents that just flat out don't care. I'm talking about parents sending their kids to school smelling and in the same clothes multiple days in a row (we have called CPS, they won't do anything).
Anyway, I digress, my point is that we have a difficult group which makes field trips incredibly stressful and not fun. I never know what is going to happen while on the field trip. I deal with so many terrible behaviors. I have to tolerate behaviors from children that aren't mine that I would never tolerate from my own child. I know these kids though, they all have potential and they can be super sweet and I genuinely love them all but the behaviors are difficult to deal with sometimes. I know some of our parents are doing their best to raise their children as single parents who work and that explains a few of our kids but not all of them.
My husband is always jealous that I get to go on field trips and I always tell him it's not as fun as he thinks it is. I got to ride in a limo with a kid once because the kid sold a lot of items and won that as a prize and everyone at the school was jealous that I got to go in a limo and I laughed. I was one of two adults in a limo full of hyper children. It wasn't as enjoyable as they all thought. There is a meme going around with Steve Carell's character from the office that says "Honestly, every time I try to do something fun or exciting, you make it not that way" and it pretty much describes most of our children. They ruin a lot of fun things because they can't behave and just let us all enjoy them. I love these kids with my entire being but sometimes it's just so stressful. It's stressful taking them places and not knowing how they're going to act and what we are going to have to do. Maybe field trips would be fun if we had more well behaved children but we don't so mostly it's just stressful. It's stressful enough at school but then you take them to another place where they're all hyper and excited and it's worse. I am unable to really enjoy it. The buddy I work with has a great mom and I've made friends with her as she was also a para at my work for a couple of years and she went on a couple of field trips with us and that made it a little more fun. She and I would often take a bigger group of kids because A. We had experience working with kids and B. There were two of us so we often offered to take a larger group if necessary. Typically, our groups were made of parent chaperones and paras and the teachers would either take the more difficult kids or would just be around to grab kids if they got away from their groups, but as I said after last year with a lot of the parent issues we had this year it was decided there would be no parents allowed on the trip.
I feel like field trips could be fun if you had well behaved kids who just wanted to learn things and have fun without turning everything into a WWE match or screaming at the top of their lungs or not listening and all kinds of other behaviors. Since I've only ever dealt with kids with bad behaviors I have no experience of what a fun field trip is. Even when I chaperoned my son's field trips they weren't usually fun because he too had a rough group of kids. There was one year it was kind of fun with his group because he was paired with a kid who actually behaved and it was pretty easy with just me and the two boys and we could move at our own pace. We went to the zoo and I let both boys choose what they wanted to do and it was probably the most stress free field trip I've ever been on as an adult. We even got to choose when we ate. That is not an experience that has been repeated but I definitely keep that experience with me as to what a normal experience could be.
1 person likes this
1 response
@rsa101 (38761)
• Philippines
8 Jun
People often assume teachers and paraprofessionals get to enjoy field trips as fun outings. The truth is far from it.
Watching school staff manage field trips reveals how stressful these days really are. Imagine corralling dozens of overstimulated children in an unfamiliar environment, dealing with constant behavior issues, and relying on parent chaperones who often cause more problems than they solve.
The rare well-behaved class might make for a smooth trip, but most of the time, it's a test of patience and crowd control. What looks like a "break from the classroom" is actually exhausting work - keeping track of wandering kids, preventing meltdowns, and making sure everyone stays safe.
Having seen educators before, during, and after these trips, it's clear: field trips aren't the perk people think they are. They're a responsibility that leaves staff more drained than a regular school day.
