Chaperones

In my 25 years as a band and choral director, I have chaperoned 250 or more student trips. The majority of these trips were one-day trips. We went to ball games, concerts, music festivals and sightseeing trips. As the leader of the group, my responsibility was to make all the arrangements for the trip. I had to arrange for transportation, the route we would take, where would we eat, hotel arrangements, and one of the most important arrangements - chaperones. I always chose parents with pleasant dispositions who could deal with the students pleasantly, yet firmly.

Most of our trips were daily trips and there was seldom a problem. For overnight trips lasting one or more days, you have to deal with rambunctious kids wanting to sneak out at night, and have fun. Most of the years I took junior high school kids to Disney World one year, then St. Louis on alternate years. In the early years, I would stay up most of the night to make sure no one left their room. Most days I would be very tired from lack of sleep. I soon developed a method that would allow me a good night’s sleep.

We held bed check at 10 or 11 o’clock each night. At bed check, I would close their door and tape it shut. If the tape was loose the next morning, I would know that the door had been opened. The penalty would be to move into a room with a chaperone for the remainder of the trip. This method works so well that I never had to move a student to a chaperone room.

On one trip to Disney World, I had four fun-loving boys in the same room. I didn’t quite trust them, so when I taped their door shut, I used a trick that I saw in a James Bond film. I slipped a sliver of paper into the doorjamb. The next morning, the tape was intact, but the sliver of paper was gone. I told the boys that I knew the door had been opened and they would be moving in with a chaperone. They pleaded, “Please Mr. Davis. The tape was still there. How did you know? We ordered a pizza last night and had the delivery boy re-tape the door.” I thought that was an ingenious move, so I let them off with a warning.

The worst chaperone I ever had was an elementary school teacher I’ll call Bird. She had chaperoned a couple of one-day trips and done a good job. But on a four-day trip to Disney World, she was a disaster. She said she would ride down with two of her friends, and after Disney World they would go to Daytona for a vacation. Stupid me, agreed to this. The three of them spent the entire trip criticizing me for the way I was conducting the trip. Bird demanded that I split the band into small groups, and assigned a chaperone to each group. I said, “Bird, these are junior high school students, and I will not have them walking around holding hands like you do in elementary school.” That night she got into a fight with another chaperone. I said, “Bird, you need to take your group to Daytona now.”

Teachers, choose your chaperones wisely or you may get the Bird.