Cedar Point

What up, players.

So in my eight years of teaching at a public school outside Orlando, Florida, I never once went on a field trip.  Not once.  Not even to a local fire station or waste management center.  Nothing.  To my old school district, this was a liability shit-storm, and they were terrified to let our students leave school property under their supervision.

This clearly isn't the case with my new district.

In my first year teaching at this new school - which I love, by the way - I've taken my students to a historical reenactment in Bay City, I've taken them skiing on a local 'mountain,' they've gone to their local high school a couple of times, and now I just got back from taking them on an overnight trip to Cedar f***ing Point.

Liability be damned.

Obviously, in accordance with FERPA and all other sorts of legal restrictions, I had to leave out most of the pictures I took of our trip because they had our students in them.  That sucks in terms of photo documentation for you folks, but I kinda like my job and want to keep it.  So, instead, here's a brief snippet of our two-day, 8th grade stint in fly-ridden Ohio.

. . . and in case you were wondering, NO, I didn't ride any roller coasters.

Except the Mine Ride.  The Mine Ride rules.

While kids splintered off in groups and pairs to all corners of the theme park, most of us 8th grade teachers walked around together.  Some rode roller coasters while others (myself included) hung out on nearby benches and waited for them to get off the ride.  On our first day, while checking in all the kids' medical crap (prescriptions, inhalers, epi-pens, etc.) to the park medical center, a few of us decided to check out this neighboring ride.  It was about as 'hardcore' as I like to get with rides.

Here's some rides I didn't go on.  The weather was awesome, so while I didn't get to go on any roller coasters, I did get a tan.

The people mover?  I did go on that one.

I've gotten into the habit of every time I got away for a few days, I pick something up for the girls.  I usually bring them back one of these things - which is like crack to them - but after sending this picture to Kris, I was promptly informed 'hell no,' or something to that effect.  She's heartless.

Exiting the park for dinner at a neighboring barbecue joint that was within walking distance from the entrance.

After dinner, all us teachers were in varying stages of a food coma (dinner was awesome, but we all over-indulged), so we did laps around the park trying to walk some of it off.

Taking the people mover back towards the front of the park in order to meet students.  At 7:45pm, all students were instructed to rendezvous at the main park entrance in order to meet up with their teachers at board the buses back to the hotel.

Shortly before our kids reached the parking lot, there was a near riot among the tour buses and the cops had to be called in.  Apparently, two kids from another school group got into a fight in the parking lot, and when their teacher tried to break it up, the students turned on the teacher and started beating him/her (not sure which it was.)  After this, the students went nuts, running around and banging on all the different buses, including ours (it was one of our drivers that ended up calling the cops.)  By the time our kids reached the lot, the previous rowdy school group had dispersed, leaving only agitated police officers in their wake.

We got to the hotel - again, walking distance from the park - and handed out room keys to student groups (kids had previously selected their roommates, groups of five to a room.)  

A disgusting sunset over Lake Erie.  I'm not sure what these bugs are called - katydids, mayflies, locusts, whatever - but they're fricking EVERYWHERE.  The hotel stairwells smell like dead bugs, they got in your hair, etc.  So glad we don't have these things in Michigan.  Yet another reason why I hate Ohio. . .

Morning of Day Two.  I had shared a suite with two other teachers, and had volunteered to take the pull-out couch.  We had all hung out in another teacher group's room pretty late into the night, so we were pretty sluggish getting around in the morning.

After getting around and doing a wake-up call to all the kids' hotel rooms, we finished getting ready and loaded up the tour buses.  An hour later, we cleared the building of all our students and ushered them down a lakefront sidewalk that led from the hotel to an open-air cafeteria right outside the park's side entrance.

Some dude, cleaning the beach.

Cafeteria-styled breakfast venue.  Pretty good FREE food.  Coffee was meh.

Day Two begins. . .

Here's another roller coaster I didn't go on.

Seriously - how do people enjoy this shit?

Frontier Town.  NOW we're talking. . .

The History Department (the hole was too small for my head to stick through.)

That fort's rad.

(So's this dude.)

A mill.  Of some kind.

This was a weird, weird store.

These two ladies have a shitty, shitty workload.

There was a brief light rain shower in the early afternoon, so a few of us teachers ducked into this place to seek shelter.

I think that's Hermes, right?  Has the winged hat, not sure about the pan flute and sword, though.

What's the point of this?

This grandma looks scarier than hell.

Hell yes, Mine Ride.

We took the train ride around the park a couple times in the afternoon, as everyone started to get tired.  There was this weird Old West skeleton town spread out on either side of the train, which was out of place in a park filled with roller coasters.  I mean, I get the Old West thing - pairs well with Frontier Town, right? - but why skeletons?

Around dinner time, I offered the suggestion to the rest of our crew of having an antique portrait taken of the staff (as you well know, Kris and I are long-time fans of these - our St. Augustine family portrait still hangs in our living room today, it's my favorite family picture to date.)  The rest of the staff pounced on the idea, and when we all threw in on it (for an enlarged, framed picture for the 8th grade building teacher's lounge, plus a digital copy with all repro rights), it came out to, like, $9 per teacher.  Totally worth it.

The 8th Grade Staff (minus two teachers who didn't want their pics taken, and two others who stayed behind to watch those students who didn't/couldn't go on the field trip.)  The photographers actually gave me two pistols to cross over my chest, very gangsterly, but you can barely see it.  Kinda pissed about that.

After the whole staff was photographed, myself and the other two history teachers decided to pose for a Civil War portrait.  We got repro rights to this one as well, but skipped the framing option, so this ended up being $12 per person.  Not too bad (despite the fact I was a treasonous Confederate.)

-Brian