Why is do parents not "thank" a teacher?

[Dcteacher]

I took 11 children to Borneo. For 2 weeks.

We did a lot.
Suba dived in the South China Sea.
Trekked the foothills of Mount Kinabalu.
Stayed in the jungle and learned jungle craft.
Spent to day on a tropical island.

On return. Not one single parent thanked me for the trip of a lifetime for their child.

I had spent the previous 2 years helping with fundraising, answering questions doing the paperwork, taking time out of my holiday. This is not in my job description. I don't have to do this.

Not one.

Why?

Absolutely this, if you knew the arguments these sort of trips caused you wouldn't be thanking the school either tbh. Plus the parents will have paid for it all, very little will have been raised by the kids

Sorry, completely quoted the wrong poster!! I'll try again!

But you don’t do it in your holidays and you’re not responsible for the safety and well being of all participants 24/7!

This!

You need to cater for the one allergic to nuts, one who can’t fly, one who doesn’t like sharing a room, others who are scared / missing home / don’t like fish etc etc

I'm sure you don't end up organising bespoke holidays for each child. Any school trip mine have been on have a hotel with rooms, pre booked and shown to parents. There's no single rooms and no special no fly travel. So being kind to anxious teens is just human nature surely?

Just an aside about the costs - My dn went on a four day trip to NY with the school. Two art galleries included. It cost 1500 and that didn't include food. Seemed madly expensive as I'd have thought schools would have economy of scale, but it was through a company.

@P0llyP0cket But you don’t do it in your holidays and you’re not responsible for the safety and well being of all participants 24/7!

We absolutely do it in our own time - evenings and weekends included. And we have different work responsibilities (presenting, closing big deals, meetings, networking) which I'll wager is more work than a teacher does on a school trip.

That’s not madly expensive. Have you travelled recently? Trip to NY flights accommodation and trips £1.5k sounds about right.

This really surprises me. My daughter went on a weekend netball camp and the parents clubbed together to buy wine and flowers for the teachers who took them.

Absolutely teachers should be thanked for residentials.

Lots of parents post on MN about the stress of organising their child’s birthday party, then running the party etc be it a couple of hours of having 10 kids in your house or at a soft play etc … now imagine that being more kids and for a whole week in an unfamiliar place.

Can you see how that would be stressful and not a holiday?

Being responsible for other people’s children 24/7 for days on end is NOT a holiday.

Once more, slowly, for those at the back: IT'S. NOT. A. FUCKING. HOLIDAY. FOR. THE. TEACHERS.

Would you expect holiday tour reps/guides not to be paid because they work in a nice destination dealing with dickheads?

And of course the expenses for accompanying staff need to be factored into the overall cost. No staff = no trip.

Because people are dicks.

You sound lovely. I taught for a long time and got to the point where all of my goodwill stopped. It's worse now than it used to be, parents and kids are incredibly self-centered. Please don't give up your life it's just a job.

I have travelled long haul with work under extremely stressful conditions still not a fraction of the stress of being responsible for other peoples kids!

I don’t think we say thanks as much as we used to! I do educate my own children about this as I don’t want them to become entitled.
My child went on a two day residential. I shouted thanks on pick up. I thanked the lead a few days later and asked them to pass my thanks on to others. Said I appreciated that they spent two nights away from their own families for our children to have that experience. Perhaps parents said thanks at the time and you missed it? Some parents do say thanks and I'm sorry if no one thanked you personally.

I think a lot of parents think it is just another part of a teacher's job, so "covered" by the gifts they might give a teacher at the end of the year. (This is why DH doesn't do trips in school holidays anymore - it used to be more fun and less stressful but the paperwork and risk assessments are too onerous now and all for no additional money or thanks.)

I am genuinley bemused by the "I travel with work and no one thanks me'

You must work in grotty organisations if people you do things for never say thanks and you use your annual leave to go on work trips for colleagues benefit.

There are kinder work environments out there. work places have a culture and it's only when you move on you realise what was happening wasn't right.

Are you nuts? Have you ever taken young people on a residential trip anywhere, let alone abroad, to a jungle? OP has pulled off an incredible feat of professional and logistical top-gaming, not scrounged a 'free holiday', ffs!

OP, is this NS LA?

I could book a four night trip in September with return flights in a hotel for about 800, so yes I think 1500 is a lot, particularly as I would have assumed they would get a discount on the hotel

The parents should have thanked you, but I wish schools wouldn't do these long and expensive overseas trips. There is absolutely no need for them, the parents are under pressure to pay for them, the teachers don't seem to want to go, and from my observation the children (although I'm sure they enjoy themselves) don't fully appreciate the effort or cost involved.

This, basically.

Not all residential trips are created equal!

I would definitely be grateful for a teacher who took my dc on an unglamorous ( camping for ex) trip because that's giving up their time to do something solely for the kids benefit.

But I think I'd view a trip to Borneo as the staff giving their free time/taking on responsibility in exchange for an expenses paid trip to somewhere they want to go. You can't tell me that all the teachers on the ski trip, never get to go skiing or do anything fun! The parents will have the cost of the staff factored into their child's bill and that's probably why they don't feel especially grateful.

I largely think that if a person is volunteering to go on ski trips etc, there's a reason which isn't entirely altruistic. I have no issue with that but I'm not sure it engenders huge feelings of gratitude.

I do think saying thank you for keeping the kids safe and happy, is just good manners though because obviously there is work involved and you would thank people in life generally when they are doing their paid work.

Don't do it then YAWN. No other profession does it except teachers and then they wonder why people get sick of them moaning so much!

But of course you are paying for the teachers' places. It's part and parcel of the trip - you get 24/7 childcare, which is included in the cost. It's the same for any school trip.

Who else do you expect to pay for the teacher's places?

Please come back to these threads one day in the future when you realise your kids don't have any qualified actual teachers for their GCSE/A' level subjects.

That's the whole POINT. Teachers AREN'T doing these things so much anymore. They're sick to death of attitudes like yours and are quitting in their thousands.

Well done, you.

I imagine that taking a group of teens is massively stressful: dealing with lost phones, kids sneaking out to go clubbing after lights out, making sure nobody comes home pregnant. Not a holiday at all for the poor teachers! I always remind my DC to thank the teachers at the end, but I don't thank them myself because I dont see them: trips start and finish at a bus stop on a busy road and the DC walk to where their parents have parked. But I do appreciate what they do very much.

We are often expected to do it. Especially MFL teachers, like me.

It's always interesting to see the reaction when teachers point out negative things about what goes on in schools. People say 'Well quit then!' or 'Well don't do it then!' as if they are somehow calling our bluff. Teachers are quitting, in tens of thousands. Schools are offering fewer and fewer trips. It's the kids who suffer and miss out. And it's the kids we do it for. No teacher runs a school trip for their own amusement.

Who else do you expect to pay for the teacher's places?

Well exactly. Schools can barely afford textbooks. And obviously it's bad enough that the accompanying teachers aren't paid overtime, never mind expecting them to pay for their own places!