Our scheduled departure was for Monday at 5:30. That meant getting to the airport at 3:00.<\/p>\n
To clarify: 3:00 in the morning. Security doesn’t even open until 3:00!<\/em> Certainly no Jo’s coffee. No Taco Deli breakfast tacos. And what about getting every one of 37 high school sophomores to show up on time at such an obscene hour?<\/p>\n “Oh no…” she said a few days before we left. “I can see some kids not making it.” <\/p>\n She spoke from experience. She’s been teaching for decades. She was my grown son’s high school homeroom teacher, for heaven’s sake. She knows these kids. She’s traveled with them. On the Thailand trip a few times. And Costa Rica. And Panama. (Not sure about Rome.)<\/p>\n “So what happens if they don’t get there on time?” I asked.<\/p>\n “They get left behind,” she said. “Their families pay all that money, and they don’t go.”<\/p>\n My eyes widened. <\/p>\n “It has happened.”<\/p>\n …<\/p>\n I grabbed our student roster and yanked out the names of students I knew — those whom I have taught: about a dozen. I sent an email note to all of them. Remember,<\/em> I said. We’re all showing up at 3:00am. Sharp. Don’t be that person who doesn’t make it on time. See you there!<\/em><\/p>\n … <\/p>\n A weekend passed, and the fateful morning came. I got out of the Lyft (because my fair and industrious partner had not the slightest interest in shuttling me at such an hour). I walked through the glass doors as they automatically swished open.<\/p>\n It was 3:00 on the dot.<\/p>\n Thirty feet inside the doors off to the right there were two teachers with their arms wrapped around our travel binders and a gaggle of shockingly alert-looking high school sophomores with backpacks and rolling suitcases and smiling faces. Smiling faces. On sophomores. On a Monday morning. At three-friggin-o’clock in the morning.<\/p>\n This was a good sign.<\/p>\n We took the first batch of them through security just after it opened. Within 20 minutes, the everyone was there. The first 34 or so of them got through security quickly. The last three stragglers arrived ten minutes late (but of course, our announced time accounted for that), and on balance even they didn’t have to wait in line long.<\/p>\n And, mirabile dictu, <\/em>when the doors of the airplane closed, 37 students and 5 teachers were…<\/p>\n …all in our places with bright shining faces. Good morning to you!<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Our scheduled departure was for Monday at 5:30. That meant getting to the airport at 3:00. To clarify: 3:00 in the morning. Security doesn’t even open until 3:00! Certainly no Jo’s coffee. No Taco Deli breakfast tacos. And what about getting every one of 37 high school sophomores to show up on time at such […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6856","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6856","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6856"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6856\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6858,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6856\/revisions\/6858"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}