Sunday, October 25, 2009

BJ's - The Happiest Place on Earth

My students recently won a class field trip to BJ's (the store, similar to CostCo and Sams Club). They are partnering with our school, so they made our hallway behavior a competition, and my class won the field trip.  I was very proud of them, and they really enjoyed themselves.  They got to see some of the behind the scenes stuff, meet the employees (one of which was the mom of one of my students), and then decorate bags of food for a food bank.  It was nice to see them helping someone else.  I'm really glad that was a part of the trip.

One student stuck by my side the whole time, telling me which pictures to take.  "Action shot, Ms. Christie!  Get that one!"  When I was too late or didn't take the picture, he was truly annoyed with me, as though I was the most incompetent teacher he had ever had.  At one point, they got to walk inside one of the giant freezers in the receiving area of the store, and he said, "Get a picture of that!  You never know.  You may not get another chance to come to BJ's."  He's right, we do not know what tomorrow brings :-)  

A bit later, we walked near another freezer, and the kids got to go in again - the same student said to me, "It's so cold, Ms. Christie!  Go over there and feel it!"  I responded by saying that I could feel it from where I was (it was really crowded, and I didn't feel like busting through the kids to go feel the air).  He said, "No, I want you to walk in!"  So I started walking over and the employee shut the door before I could go in.  My student looked at me, disappointedly, and said, "You walked over there really slow so that she would close it before you got there.  I could tell."  He's pretty perceptive!  :-)  He got over it pretty quickly.

After we returned from our trip, I had the students write Thank You letters to Mr. Frank and Ms. Megan, the people who hosted our tour of the store.  Here are some of the funny and precious things they wrote:

BJ's is better than Sam's Club.

Thank you for choosing our class to do the decoration.  I blow kisses to you all "mpau" (she then drew a pair of lips beside that sentence).  

Thank you for haveing us at Bj's that's was one of my best's feld tips thank for the cook (cookie) and for the cony chanch (candy crunch?).  I am telling my mom that to come and by stuff at BJ's.

I will come back and be a member.

BJ's definitely made some kids want to shop there and get their parents to become members there!  :-)  One of my boys kept saying, "I can't wait until I turn 16 and I can go work at BJ's..."  Who knew they would love this field trip so much?