The Saga of the Souvenir

My youngest son who is in third grade had his only field trip of the year last week. The destination was The World of Coca-Cola (since Coke was invented here in Atlanta there is a museum downtown). As soon as the permission slip came home weeks and weeks ago he asked if I could sign it and write a check that night for $18, making sure it went into his backpack for the next day. Every day for 3 or 4 weeks I heard him counting the days. There was no invite for any parental chaperoning so it was a regular work day for me.The excitement and anticipation was immense!

At the end of the field trip day I spoke to my husband, which is the usual routine, to check in on what is going on that evening—who has to be where and when or is nothing going on. He tells me that our youngest son (who is with him in the afternoons) is a little upset because there was a souvenir that he didn’t get. So I am thinking-hmmm, that’s weird, I knew nothing about bringing money for a souvenir. Well, what happened is that each teacher was given a box of glass-bottled Cokes to take back to the classroom and give to the students. Once back at the classroom there was about an hour left of school for the day. At the end of the day the teacher told the students that instead of handing them out she was going to give the box of Cokes to charity. For reals.

In the meantime the students saw that the other six classes went home with their souvenir Coke bottle. So instead of hearing about the field trip deets, the first thing my Hubs heard, and then later on the phone to me, is an upset son giving us this news. Seems the teacher is still deciding what to do because after the weekend the students were asking her again if they would be getting the Cokes and she said she is thinking of giving them to Relay for Life or selling them and then she tried to engage them in a math problem such as “if there are 47 bottles and each sold for $ .50 then how much would that be? So my son is asking us if he can take in $ .50 to buy one. (ummm, I think we were one of the few in the class who paid the $18 field trip money).

I pasted this from the facility's website under school field trips:

A visit to this dynamic facility will be educational, entertaining and inspiring for the whole class. From a thrilling multisensory 4-D theater to a marvelously restored 1880’s soda fountain, you’ll experience something new and inviting around every corner. You and your students have so much to learn and will also take home

a special one-of-a-kind World of Coca-Cola glass bottle produced exclusively for our guests on our fully-functioning bottling line.

The other evening my son and I were in the grocery store at the Coke aisle (that is what soft drinks are called in Georgia: Coke is the generic name for all soda) and saw six-packs of the small glass-bottled Cokes, VERY similar to the souvenir, and cost about $5.00. I have contemplated buying them and sending them in for the class. There will be a Spring party in a couple of weeks that I will probably end up coordinating—I should bring them in then!

In my adult brain, full of other tragic stories in our day to day world, this is annoying small-stuff, but not to my son and the 17 other kids in the class. To him it is a big teacher fail—and honestly extremely oddball to my Hubs and I (one of his comments: the kid works too hard for this...). I’m sure tonight I will hear another update on the latest because I know these students know something wishy-washy is going on and I have no doubt a student will ask the teacher again for an update. Not sure of my next steps yet--I'm giving it a couple more days.