Guiding: A Wildebeest Tale
Worst tour ever — but did learning occur?
DC can be especially beautiful in the early days of spring when the scads of tulips, wisteria and daffodils compete with budding trees for sensory attention.
Coupled with a beautiful sunny day — a few clouds in the sky and a wafting breeze — my spirits fairly soared as I walked to meet my student group on the National Mall.
Little did I know what lay in store as the afternoon unfolded.
The kids seemed normal enough though when I explained to the lead teacher how I approach a student tour (firm hand on the front end and loosening as we go) she seemed relieved saying there were even some girls who might be a handful.
This was storm clouds appearing on the near horizon.
I often ask a group, as an icebreaker, who has been to DC before, and when hands are raised, tell them this is my first day and I can use their help. Being middle-schoolers they took me literally and the hyenas began to circle.
Did I appear to them as easy pickings, at their mercy as it were, their predatory instincts aroused?
They numbered about 25 in total with three “sleeper cells” of three or four each who began to pounce at the first opportunity which is to say immediately.
Did I tell you it was a private school?
It began with a barrage of knowingly inane questions and frivolous answers, a portent to future behavior.
I never allow students to walk in front me for safety reasons but one team of terrorists decided to make this their specialty always summoning up a look of surprised innocence when I called them out.
With the three chaperones nowhere in sight (they never are) at Arlington Cemetery another crew of boys stood less than three feet from me while one engaged me in direct eye contact as he slammed his closed fist into his open palm.
Such tiresome and twitish behavior with me limited in my responses. I would have been well within my rights to terminate the tour right there but was propelled forward by routine more than anything else.
They tag-teamed relentlessly, first one cell and then another moving in for the attack.
We walked up to Arlington House where I turned them loose briefly and then over to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier where they managed to behave themselves perhaps because the guards had guns.
On the walk down the hill finally having enough, I stopped the group and took one trio back to a distant chaperone, explaining their intolerable behavior as they looked on like aggrieved and wounded angels.
A few minutes later I stopped at a special memorial stone, a Medal of Honor recipient. My “fist slammer” from earlier accused me of being disrespectful for leaning on the memorial stone as I spoke, a nice touch of irony given his earlier behavior.
This was the moment when I decided, though I was scheduled for two more days with them, that it would be bye-bye at the Arlington visitor center where the day’s tour was set to conclude.
I called my boss and delivered my decision, only the second time in 16 years I have walked away from a group — the other one was a private school, as well.
It was an act of self respect--and sanity.
When I met the students back at the bus there stood three of them with a chaperone who told me they had “something to say.”
They apologized and I responded that I hoped they would reflect on the effect of their behavior and that I would no longer be their guide.
I later learned that the chaperones were mortified and that parents back home were called, etc., etc.
I agreed with the tour director that if one kid, or possibly a parent, learned from the experience that it was ultimately worth it though my patience was sorely tested.
I try to learn from every tour I participate in and my lesson from this one is to call “bullshit” sooner.
Cheers.
