By Mike Armstrong
Reporter, Carbon County Comet
“It was amazing,” Hanna Elementary School (HES) 4th-grade teacher Kyle Warren said about taking 18 students to Yellowstone Park for a school trip. “The students were from the 5th and 6th grades.”
Warren said the students had to work for their place on this three day trip they took in early October. “We had a stipulation that they had to earn the trip by good attendance (they were allowed two absences) and their behavior had to be clean, no office referrals,” Warren said. “Grades had to be good, so they had to do some work on their end and attendance was spectacular those couple of weeks leading up to it.”
Warren said he and Northern Carbon County Principal for elementary schools of Carbon County School District No. 2 (CCSD2), Jackie Jones, had talked about getting kids to Yellowstone and had been looking into Expedition Yellowstone but they never got the lottery.
“So we wrote a Rec Board grant and that paid for about half of the trip and we had fundraising efforts, some generous community donations that were spontaneous once they heard about the trip we pulled together,” Warren said.
“We charged $35 a student.” Jones said that because of donations and fundraising, when they went to the Fishing Bridge Store, they handed each student $20 for souvenirs.
“We had an anonymous donor give $500 to help feed the kids at night, which was really cool,” Warren said. “We stayed a mile outside the East Gate.”
Jones had stayed at Pahaska Teepee Lodge before and knew the owners and Warren said they got a little bit of a deal. “We are all in one big lodge together,” Warren said. “The first day we went to Cody and went to the Buffalo Bill Center of the West, where they had two hours to explore in teams. Then we went and got our lodging and saw two grizzly bears the first night.”
Superintendent of CCSD2, Darrin Jennings, got to see a grizzly fairly up close that first night. “Mr. Jennings went to the car to get his phone charger, and a bear was walking through our yard basically,” Warren said. “It was probably only 50 yards away from him. Mr. Jennings got back into our lodge pretty quickly.”
Jones and Warren said the school provided the students with food to make lunch. The first night the girls made all the sandwiches for the group, the second night the boys made all the sandwiches, and the third night the adults made them.
The activities started at 6:30 a.m. each morning.
“I think one of the neatest things was that Kyle would get the boys going and I would get the girls going,” Jones said. “We never had an issue with getting a kid out of bed. They were so excited and ready to go.”
The students were not allowed any devices or TV, with the exception of cell phones to take pictures.
“Service in Yellowstone is so sketchy; if they happened to get service, it was for just a couple of moments,” Jones said. “It was excellent to not have them buried in their phones.”
“They embraced everything we had planned for them,” Warren said. “They just wanted more. They never complained.”
The first day, the group visited the lake area and had three major points of interest. They went to Mud Volcano and walked a trail and learned about how the geothermals worked. They went to the Canyon area and saw waterfalls.
“We did the visitor center there, which has a really great exhibit on volcanoes,” Warren said. “We did a trail that took us to the brink of one of the waterfalls and it was a pretty brutal hike. It was two-thirds of a mile in and two-thirds back with switchbacks.”
While at the waterfalls, the students had art projects. Through the Rec Board grants some cameras were purchased.
Three Suburbans were driving the group around and Jones said her favorite part of the trip was visiting and laughing with the students as they went from point to another. “I got to listen to the kids, laugh with the kids, hear stories and watch them get excited about something,” Jones said. “Each day we had different kids in the Suburbans, so they were with different people all the time. It was a pretty neat experience for me.”
“The kids got along with each other and talked to each other more,” Warren said. “They were hanging with kids that maybe they had not before. I told Jackie it was one of the most rewarding moments in my career, but now I say it was the most rewarding moment of my career. I would not trade it for anything.”
Each evening was time for wildlife watching.
Day 3, the group went to Mammoth Hot Springs and to the visitor center.
“Some people might say this was just a vacation for the kids, but it was way more than that,” Jones said. “But we went to several visitor centers where there was science and nature information. The kids took it all in. Of course, seeing grizzly bears, bison and other wildlife was huge for them, but they knew it was a learning experience for them.”
Jones said she sometimes would get choked up as she reflected with Warren about what she was seeing the students do. “There was one girl, Ali Bustos, who has one lung and she did every hike and activity; it was amazing, and I know that word gets overused,” Jones said. “You could not write that story. I bet I got nine hours of sleep during this trip, but I ran on these kids’ energy.”
The last day they visited the geyser “Old Faithful”. They exited through Grand Teton National Park and there was a moment when the group was watching a bear, which bluff-charged them. The students were never in danger, and Warren said they had even been warned this could happen when watching bears. “The best part was that we warned them that there could be bears in our yards where we are staying, bears could bluff charge and all these incidents happened and they saw we were not just being dramatic,” Warren laughed slightly. “This is a wild place.”
Jones said she was proud of the students wherever they went, whether it was lodging, restaurants or gift shops. They were always on good behavior.
“I was told all the time how well-mannered our kids were by so many people,” Jones said. “That is what we are trying to do with these students. Make them into almost perfect humans.”
“We have said, we wish every teacher would get an opportunity to do a trip like this with kids,” Warren said. “You get to see them in such a different light. We know our kids in school, but outside like this, there is a difference in how you learn about these students.”
When asked about her favorite time of the trip, Jones said it was the hike to the lower falls. “It is not an easy hike and we had kids and adults huffing and puffing,” Jones said. “But we all conquered it and getting to the top was my moment.”
Warren, besides being a teacher, is a professional photographer and specializes in wildlife, especially bears. “My favorite part of the trip was watching bears with kids,” Warren said. “I have dreamed about that my entire career. The kids ate it up. They asked questions about bears and I felt that they partially embraced these animals so much because they know how much I like bears.” There were 11 sightings of bears on the trip.
The kids made a list of 18 things they wanted to see and 17 were accomplished. Sighting a mountain lion was the only item on their list that they missed.
There were four chaperones. Jones, Warren, Jennings and Anniemarie Lamoureux.
Lamoureux did science lessons around Mammoth Springs and made sure there was that component while enjoying Yellowstone.
Jones is thankful for the families who let the students go with them for four days and three nights. She is also grateful to the Rec Board and how they made so much of the trip a success.
Jennings was also pleased with how the Yellowstone trip went.
“I think the experience the HES had educationally was probably the best thing I have done in my 30 years of education,” Jennings said. “They were just engaged and showed a lot of character in whatever they were doing.”
Jennings said there was no social media the whole time.
“They just had to take in Yellowstone National Park and Buffalo Bill Wild West Museum,” Jennings said. “There was the added bonus of workers coming up to me and telling me how well behaved the students were.”
Jennings encourages other teachers in the district to consider doing something like the Yellowstone trip.
“The sky is the limit in our district, where we prioritize the power of where we live and we want kids to have an experience of where we live,” Jennings said. “That is a challenge I would like to put out there to our other teachers or principals to have the same experience or better experience than our HES kids did.”
He wanted to thank Jones, Warren and Lamoureux for their efforts in making the trip successful.
Jennings had a favorite time that stood out too.
“Honestly, this is going to sound corny, and it is a teacher talking, but being able to develop a relationship with all of those kids is something I don’t get as a superintendent, but I got it on that field trip, and that will motivate me for many years to come,” Jennings said. “Just building relationships with the kids was a great part.”
The field trip to Yellowstone by the HES students can be said to be an unqualified success in many ways. It also proves education can come from outside the classroom if it is well planned by educators who care and are supported by the community.
