Curious - how many nights in DC for school trips?

[SKL]

Hi, I just realized my kids' school is only staying in DC 2 nights for their big class trip.  I thought it was always roughly a week trip.

They will be driving and arrive in DC about noon Monday, then have to leave by early afternoon Wednesday.  Feels like a rip-off.  😕

So ... what is the norm / range these days?

[Sneezyone]

Two nights is the norm here.

Edited January 16, 2020 by Sneezyone

[Storygirl]

My kids will leave on Monday and return late on Thursday. So four days, three nights.

[mom2scouts]

Our local schools stay two nights.

[Farrar]

2-3 nights these days. They hire these tour companies that run the whole thing and move the kids constantly. When we've tried to see cousins and kids we know from far away who were here on their school trip and we've seen their agendas, it's bananas to me. It's like one hour here, one hour there, dance party at the hotel.

Honestly, I can't stand the 8th grade trippers. They're just being herded from place to place. None of them seem to notice anything they see. They swarm the museums and the Mall. Some of them are just super rude. I tend to see the worst entitled behavior from them. Basically, I'm not a fan of this experience.

[DawnM]

Last year I went on this dreaded trip.  I was the 8th grade counselor and was forced to go. We stayed 2 nights.  We left at 4:30am on a Wed. morning.  We got in around noon and toured the rest of the day and evening.  Then hotel at 10pm.  Then up at 6 and toured all day and evening until 10pm. Then up at 6 the next day and left DC around 6pm and got in around 2am Saturday morning.

However, my son's school went for 3 nights.  But their trip cost more.

I hope to NEVER have to go again.  

Edited January 16, 2020 by DawnM

[EmseB]

If I can even remember 8th grade...we did a 5 or six day trip, but we were coming from west coast and part of the trip was a night or two in Williamsburg, so DC nights were two or three tops.

[Junie]

I grew up in southern Pennsylvania, so our trip to DC was a day trip with no hotel stay involved.

The trip was for 11th and 12th graders who were in year 3 or 4 of a foreign language and the only place we visited was the art museum.

During my 12th grade year, there was an exchange student from France in my Spanish class.  When we got to DC, my teacher said something like this.  "Most of you saw the art museum last year.  T (the exchange student) has never been to DC before and will be returning to France in a couple of weeks.  There's a lot more to DC than the art museum.  Don't miss the bus.  Don't get arrested."

[hippiemamato3]

4 nights/5 days here 

[Terabith]

My kids did two nights, but we are four hours from DC.  It hardly seems worth it if you’re traveling more than that.  I will say my kids hardly saw anything.  

[SKL]

Hmm, well, I'll be interested to learn what they end up cramming into that time period.

We have gone to DC on shorter (business-with-kids-along) trips and managed to see a few things, but it wasn't much educational value.  I was hoping they would actually learn something this time.

[Terabith]

10 minutes ago, SKL said:

Hmm, well, I'll be interested to learn what they end up cramming into that time period.

We have gone to DC on shorter (business-with-kids-along) trips and managed to see a few things, but it wasn't much educational value.  I was hoping they would actually learn something this time.

My general assumption is nobody learns anything on school trips.

[May]

I wouldn’t waste my money sending my child on an 8th grade field trip to DC. I’ve been in the museums when groups come in. Typically, they have 1-2 hours to spend in each museum. It usually takes 15-20 minutes just to get oriented and decided what you want to see. Many times, I see the groups wander aimlessly, not seeming to see anything. Of course, I live here, so that does influence my opinion.

[EmseB]

Aw man, I loved my 8th grade DC trip! DH and I moved to DC in my late 20s and there were still things I remembered from my trip that I wanted to see again or see more of. I know busses full of middle schoolers are not the best, but I felt like it was so awesome to be able to go. I have such good memories of that trip with one of my good friends. Maybe it's because I was mostly raised on the west coast and had never been east before? But they aren't totally useless for everyone!

ETA: I was not a super great student and middle school was mostly miserable for me, but that trip is one thing that I look back on with good feelings from that time.

Edited January 17, 2020 by EmseB

[SKL]

12 hours ago, EmseB said:

Aw man, I loved my 8th grade DC trip! DH and I moved to DC in my late 20s and there were still things I remembered from my trip that I wanted to see again or see more of. I know busses full of middle schoolers are not the best, but I felt like it was so awesome to be able to go. I have such good memories of that trip with one of my good friends. Maybe it's because I was mostly raised on the west coast and had never been east before? But they aren't totally useless for everyone!

ETA: I was not a super great student and middle school was mostly miserable for me, but that trip is one thing that I look back on with good feelings from that time.

I agree that this is a big deal for the kids either way.  It's exciting.  Their school really hypes it up.  I was hoping it would be sort of a rite of passage, but this is even shorter than their 6th grade environmental camp trip.

I never got to go on the DC trip because I moved at the wrong time.  My first time in DC, I was 23.  It was awesome.  Ever since then, I've been looking forward to my kids' class trip, LOL.

[Farrar]

My school never did them and we were so poor I couldn’t have gone (or maybe I could have since I got free lunch? it always included other perks like free AP exams). I first went on a church trip when we basically just stopped on the way to a mission trip for an afternoon. No one would let me go see the giant impressionist retrospective at the NGA and I’m still mildly bitter. I think it was some sort of effort to make me not the sort of 12 year old who wants to cry when people deny her an art museum, but that was obviously a losing battle.

I think the value is mostly the bonding and freedom of it. And probably just seeing a city for some kids. If my kids were in school (they wouldn’t do a DC trip because that would be dumb, but the equivalent) I’d send them knowing it was basically pointless from an educational point of view, but a rite of passage from their perspective.

[vonfirmath]

1 hour ago, SKL said:

I agree that this is a big deal for the kids either way.  It's exciting.  Their school really hypes it up.  I was hoping it would be sort of a rite of passage, but this is even shorter than their 6th grade environmental camp trip.

I never got to go on the DC trip because I moved at the wrong time.  My first time in DC, I was 23.  It was awesome.  Ever since then, I've been looking forward to my kids' class trip, LOL.

 

I was in 8th grade in Houston.

I don't remember anyone mentioning a 8th grade trip at all. OTOH I left a week or so early to travel back to Ohio with my dad to help clean out the grandparents house (Grandma had died and we ended up bringing Grandpa to Texas to live with us).BUT.. From everything you've said, I'm not sure I want my son to go that far away with a class trip at only 8th grade.  We can take him to DC ourselves and have a better trip overall.

(And see relatives. My husband has an aunt and a cousin that live in the area.)

[Guest]

I know my local public district restricts trips to 2 days out of the classroom, so the most you will ever get is 3 nights, four days, two of which are driving days, unless it overlaps a vacation. 

 

When I was in school, we went to DC for something an average of once a year, so basically saw one museum a year. But it was only about a 2 hour drive. And most of us went to DC regularly with our parents anyway. 

 

 

 

Edited January 17, 2020 by dmmetler

[Guest]

I will say the best class trip I've seen is one my former school did before 9/11. Most of our kids had never even left the city. They took a week, plus two weekends, and went to a different university/college for each of the first three days. Sometimes, they got to stay in dorms, sometimes in dorm common rooms in sleeping bags, and eating in the cafeteria. They stayed at Howard, in DC, for 3 days, and went to different settings in the city, guided by a college student, so there might be six groups of kids going to different places each day, and the kids could pick which were the most interesting, and I think most then subdivided further inside each museum, so the groups were more like no more than 10 kids. They then returned by a different route, seeing different places and colleges. 

 

The kids often came back really excited about their plans for high school and what they were interested in doing in college, and where they could go. 

 

 

[matrips]

On 1/16/2020 at 11:32 AM, SKL said:

Hi, I just realized my kids' school is only staying in DC 2 nights for their big class trip.  I thought it was always roughly a week trip.

They will be driving and arrive in DC about noon Monday, then have to leave by early afternoon Wednesday.  Feels like a rip-off.  😕

So ... what is the norm / range these days?

It is a rip-off.  DC as a family trip, yes. I’ve watched the groups of kids in DC on school trips and not a fan of spending our money that way. I’m sure the kids have fun hanging out with their classmates though.  We went to Great Adventure for the day on our 8th grade trip.

As other posters mentioned, it’s not really an educational trip. So two nights is probably fine for its purpose.