The truth about what students – and staff – do on ski trips

Hormonal teenagers away from home with access to alcohol, adrenaline sports and the opposite sex. What could go wrong on a school ski trip?

Of course, the answer is abundant. Earlier this week, an Education Regulatory Authority hearing disqualified the school’s headteacher, Justine Drury, from the profession for failing to stop pupils from shoplifting, drinking and of having sex during a ski trip in Switzerland in 2017.

From snowball fights to illnesses, beer binges and bus breakdowns, our writers reveal what happened on their own educational excursions to the slopes.

Visible signs of aging

Nathan, 39 years old, HR manager

Our school ski trip was the most anticipated outing of the school year (for the participating 14 year olds), with pre-trip preparation lasting several weeks.

In hindsight, housing 30 children in groups of six in self-catering accommodation in the middle of Val d’Isère was not the wisest decision.

There was a lot of alcohol bought from a nearby supermarket, someone tried to cook bacon in a toaster which started a small fire in the kitchen, and another student broke his wrist while attempting to jump from the roof of a leisure center into a thick snowdrift. All the children returned alive, but the teachers were visibly elderly.

Blood red on snow white

Will, 52, financial services

Our school ski trip involved traveling in the coach that normally took us 15 minutes to the football pitches. The same driver who took us on this short trip drove us to the Alps, wearing the same sunglasses, even though he was driving at night. We didn’t know when or if he was asleep. It didn’t seem like it was on the ferry, where it wasn’t just the students who were planning to misbehave.

On the slopes, a teacher fell and stuck his stick in his thumb while trying to get up. I can still see the red of the blood on the white of the tracks.

But the real victims weren’t revealed until we returned, and one master had magically disappeared, never to be spoken of again. It turned out that he and a mother had gone a little too far after après-ski. Our antics, on the other hand, were very tame.

Lost in translation

Claire, 47 years old, writer

I was 17 when I went on a school ski trip to Italy with two friends. As the only sixth graders on the trip, we were supposed to be there to “help” with the younger kids.

We actually got arrested by one of the teachers for smoking in our hotel room, and at a local bar we learned how to say “beer burps” in Italian (“la birra ti fa ruttare “).

On the way home our coach broke down on the motorway in Germany and, being the only one to have done the German GCSE, I was woken up and asked to explain to the breakdown services that we didn’t have enough time to wait for one because we would miss the boat. Obviously, it was a very educational trip.

Illicit affairs

Matthieu, 49 years old, teacher

As a teacher, I have some sympathy for the principal who lost her job after losing control of her students. Imagine taking a group of hormonal teenagers with all the personal responsibility of a mayfly and letting them loose without their parents – probably for the first time.

On my own school trip – about 35 years ago – there were many underage drinking, but the only illicit affairs were clearly between teachers.

It was a world before any incriminating WhatsApp messages or social media posts, but fraught with the stress of having to look after dozens of other people’s (drunk) children. I’m not surprised they needed to let off some steam.

It’s all downhill

Nicole, 45 years old, editor

Our school ski trip actually took place in sixth grade, so most of the students’ excitement about being able to get contraband alcohol or cigarettes had pretty much dissipated.

The main drama, aside from the fact that a student caught Mr. King – the most feared teacher in the school – in the face with a snowball launched with the intensity of an Exocet missile first day, occurred when virtually every child and teacher caught a vomiting virus. the second day.

Pity the poor teachers who try to supervise 16 teenagers who vomit constantly in a dormitory for 48 hours. Seven days have never been so long.

Skiing with —–

Simon, 44 years old, writer

When my state school in south-east London announced that it was offering its first (and last) ski trip, my first thought, given that it’s a huge place, wasn’t so much illicit schnapps or dorm room shenanigans as my huge advantage of being the only child in a ski family.

I was 14 years old and my bony butt was already sliding down the slopes of Chamonix and Verbier. So, for a week in 1996, I was the king of St. Johann, a small Austrian seaside resort.

In truth, I was what we technically call in mountain areas a “skier.” Worse still – and rightly so – the girls couldn’t have been less impressed.

Reversed

Serena, 50 years old, journalist

I went to a single-sex school, so the school ski trip, organized in tandem with the boys’ branch of our educational establishment, was the first time most of us, at 14, had spent time with a member of the opposite sex who we were not related to. Spot the hysteria from the coach trip.

Surprisingly, the following year my parents agreed for me to go on another ski trip with some of the boys I had met on the first one, but without teachers. My vivid memory of this particularly well-lubricated second Alpine excursion is the frequent use of the word “bowl”.

Like in a sick bowl.

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