Adventures in Chaperoning

It's the life we've chosen - the life of prep school teachers. That means that we don't just work Monday through Friday. Instead, we chaperone. Between Megan's role as Dean of Students and Wade's various jobs - MUN advisor, coach, and Student Council advisor - there's been a lot of Morris chaperoning.

Student Council organized the Masquerade Ball a few months ago, which meant Wade and Megan got to play dress-up while watching the school band rock out to Eric Clapton and the Rolling Stones. Megan is pictured above with Buffy, the high school guidance counselor.

One Saturday afternoon was spent raising awareness about climate change. Students and teachers marched on the Corniche, reminding Lebanese to recycle and not to litter. Based on the trash floating in the Mediterranean , we need a lot more marches.

Wade spent a recent Sunday night with this group of Model United Nations stars. Over 1,300 students from 140 schools across the country got together and pretended to be nearly every country in the world, debating climate change, nuclear proliferation, and aid to developing countries. Wade's group got assigned Laos - we didn't prevent World War III but we did bring home the Most Diplomatic Award.

Our favorite chaperoning opportunities include trips to the mountains. Here we are a few weeks ago during the Senior retreat, preparing for the zip-line. This was the easy part. Trying to get over thirty 18-year olds to go to bed at 11 pm was a bit more challenging than the zip-line.

Probably the most memorable of our chaperoning adventures was last weekend's Junior Lock-In. Essentially, a third of the Junior class signed up to lock themselves in the gym for the entire night. That meant that we needed four chaperones to make sure all hell didn't break loose - two chaperones being the Morrises.

Here's Megan setting up the tent, perched high above the revelry about to begin on the court.

The Lock-In was an all-night binger of dodgeball, monopoly, dance-offs, leap-frogging and twister. Most of the students stayed up until 4 am. While we were a bit nervous when we woke up in the morning and saw the cuddling on shared gym mats, we quickly realized that it was just some friendly male bonding.

Here's what everyone looked like at around 7 am, a few minutes before Wade woke everyone up. Needless to say, it took students and chaperones alike the rest of the weekend to recover.

Next up for this weekend: Friday night's talent show and Saturday night is Prom!