Happy Birthday to me. For my birthday I got to take three classes, two 1st great and 1 2nd) to the AMNH (American Museum of Natural History) to see the dinosaurs. Actually, I've been looking forward to it, I love field trips. My students were looking forward to it too; they've been studying dinosaurs for two months. We booked the trip in December. We got all the buses. We booked time in the lunchroom. We got over a dozen wonderful parents to take a day off work to come (we got lucky with this group, sometimes the parents are worse than the kids). None of these things are easy to do.
The schools arrive at the museum at about 10:30am and I arrive at the museum at 10:15. Our plan is to watch the mini movie on evolution, then walk through the Hall of Vertebrate Origins, on to Saurischian Dinos (the best hall, with the T. Rex and Apatosaurus), on to the Ornithischian Dinos (armored dinos), and out through Mammals and Their Extinct Relatives. It makes a perfect circle and we end up back where we started. I've done this trip 9 times and it's always gone smoothly. I was sure to check the museum website to see that none of our routes were disrupted (sometimes they close certain stairways or elevators), everything was good. But when I got there this morning I ran into another Teaching Artist from my program who was waiting for her two classes, and she informed me that the Hall of Saurischians is closed today. Because they're filming a goddamned TV show.
I was annoyed. My kids would be very disappointed not to see the T. Rex and Apatosaurus. Still, I think, we can see the Ornisthischians, the Vertebrates, the movie -- not a total loss. We'd have to change our route a little: Going through Vertebrates first, then back out and around to the other side and through Mammals to get to Ornisthischians. And this we do, until we find Mammals is closed too. Our only option is to go downstairs, walk across the entire museum, and come back upstairs. It is a big museum. These are little kids. Still, we press on and make it downstairs and back up again and my first class starts heading into the Hall. They are SO excited to finally see the dinosaurs! They pull out their paleontology journals and pencils so they can start writing and drawing everything they see! But just as they're ready to get started, some official from the film shoot comes out and says it's too noisy to keep that hall open. My kids are in the hall not one minute before we, a class of middle schoolers, and a handful of unfortunate tourists are booted. My first grade classes didn't even catch a glimpse. These kids are from the poorest neighborhoods in the Bronx. They don't get to do stuff like this very often.
I was livid. I took my kids to look at the blue whale, which is cool, but it's not dinosaurs. After I saw them and their classroom teachers to their bus, I demanded to see whomever was in charge of reservations. I wanted an apology, I wanted to know why the museum didn't make any effort to inform us that the halls would be closed (it wasn't listed in the Hall Closures section of their website), I wanted to have priority when it came to rescheduling, and I wanted him to tell me exactly why Ugly Betty is more important than children's educations. After I politely and calmly bitched him out, he eventually apologized. He explained that the film crew changed their schedule at the last minute, and, you know, since they're paying, you know, a lot more than schools, we got the boot.
Fuck you too, man.
I am still livid. Between me and the other Teaching Artist they ruined the day for more than 125 kids -- and that's just our 5 classes. I got the supervisor's direct call line and he has my info, so that mine and the other Teaching Artist's classes will be first in line for scheduling. I'm not sure if we'll be able to go, though. I'm also going to make this into a learning experience for my kids. They're supposed to be working on persuasive letters right now, so this can at least be a lesson. We're going to talk about what happened and what was wrong with the scenario. Then, we are going to write letters to the AMNH and to the producers of Ugly Betty, trying to persuade them that children's educations are more important than their show, and they're the ones who should have had to reschedule -- oh, and that we deserve their apology. I know it won't do much in the big picture, but it will be a valuable lesson, for my students, both in literacy and in greater politics of inequity.
The end.
