Today I read about Phylicia Moore's death on a school trip. It brought back memories of another child – a teenager from my school who died on a trip to a bike-building competition. He was a child from Goa, India and a kind-hearted kid. He, too, drowned in a swimming pool when the chaperones were nowhere to be seen.

Actually – I can say this now because I no longer teach at the school - the chaperones were in a room talking with each other, smoking and chattering away. To assuage their guilt the school district planted a tree in his honor, but even now his parents always set an empty place for him at the dinner table.

Yep, the school district got off well. They weren’t sued.

Avoidable Accidents, Untaught Lessons

At my school was a teacher who was always meaning to write a book on what school trip chaperones needed to know. This lady was the queen of trips and was also the one in charge of teaching the severely retarded children in the school. She was a great advocate for them but even better, she was an expert in keeping kids safe — no matter where she took them.

That woman knew everything about chaperoning. The “procedures” most people considered to be instructions in chaperoning always made her cringe. It is all so inadequate, she always said. There simply was no state-sanctioned, state-required manual for chaperones.

I wish my friend had written her book.

• She kept many a kid safe — in buses, trains, plains, hotel rooms, subway systems.
• She prevented a lot of kids from embarrassing their school or coming back from a school trip pregnant.
• She kept students healthy, accident-free, and alive.
• She kept her eyes – and all her students’ eyes—on everyone (fellow students, strangers, teachers) in the vicinity.
• She certainly would not have been in a hotel room asleep while kids were awake or playing around in a pool.

The world is full of people who are experts on something, people who mean to write a book. Unfortunately for the rest of us, they often do not.

For now, what we have to do is trust that “chaperoning” is a real job and that those who volunteer to chaperone – even if they are teachers - often are nothing more than glorified companions to our kids. Not that they are even willing to admit that, but often teachers need to be taught the basics of traveling safely with other folks' kids. The problem is that we all think we have common sense. We don't. And sometimes we need more than common sense. And sometimes common sense needs to be taught.

When will the education departments in the United States create a how-to manual for chaperoning? When will they make laws that require would-be chaperones to study that manual? And when will someone write that presently non-existent book?