Students in the Summertime?!

Every year, Six Flags sponsors a program called Read to Succeed. It's absolutely fabulous. Students read for 600 minutes after school, documented by parents, and they get a free Six Flags ticket in return. Their classroom teacher also gets a free Six Flags ticket of her very own as well!!

Most of you know I teach in a low-income school. This means that while the free Six Flags ticket is a great reward, it's not something their parents can afford to do with the whole family. So, this year I made the offer (along with my good friend and colleague, John Roper) to take any kid who wanted to go with me (us) as long as they had a free ticket.

My brave friend, Roper.

John and I rented a 15 passenger van, packed a bunch of sandwiches, Doritos, sodas and Little Debbies into a cooler and headed towards Six Flags yesterday morning. We had 8 students come along, and two additional chaperones - Bryan (who gave up his day off) and another parent, Dominic.

Waiting to go in!

This was just before Bryan's most un-favorite ride of the day. It's a carousel of swings (hanging on chains) that rises up in the air and glides up and down for about 2 or 3 minutes. The man with slight acrophobia almost lost his lunch. :-) We made it.

Going into Monster Plantation

Most of you know I am NOT a rollercoaster girl. I will watch from the ground all day long while everyone else gets turned upside down and thrown around in circles in a box on a track. However, I surprised myself by riding the Georgia Scorcher!

Photo Courtesy of Wikipedia :-)

You ride this monster standing up. STANDING UP! I was standing in line, debating on whether or not I would chicken out when I realized how short the ride was - under a minute. I talked myself into it. When we got off, I had two concerns: 1) How to make my legs stop shaking. 2) My blood pressure.

I stuck to less heart-condition inducing rides for the rest of the day.

Drying off after Skull Island

Two tired chaperones.

It was a fantastic and exhausting day. The kids had a great time, we learned we definitely need more time in the park (we only stayed until 6pm - next year we'll stay until it closes), and I can't wait to do it again! I think next year, we'll need another can. Everybody said, "Can we come with you next year?" :-)

Walking back to the van

We don't want to leave!

I said, "Show me a tired face."