Postcards From A Lockdown (staying on the light side as best as I can)

 

      I rushed into the theatre when the lockdown announcement came, running from the office and through the choir room, because I knew there were kids in the theatre. When I arrived, M said clearly, eyes wide "We shut all the doors, kmart. We didn't know if we should try and find you, so we shut all the doors." I said "You're definitely Aurora kids." Which made her smile, but was unsettling on every level.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    The second or third time the principal came on, he sounded annoyed. I think kids were running out every door instead of obeying the lock down. His subtext was "I SAID lockdown, people and I meant it. Do not make me turn this school around...." which is funny/not funny as our school is, in fact, in turn around. I laughed at his tone, anyway. 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

        The kids were in the theatre during lunch rehearsing for cabaret that night. Once everyone was relatively comforted and had located their friends and texted family, they said "So I guess cabaret is canceled tonight?" I shrugged "Anyone feel like coming back here tonight?" They shook their heads. "Then it's canceled." Fifteen minutes later, I received an email  from the district that all after school events had been canceled. I read it to the kids. We all had a chuckle. "Way ahead of you, buddy."

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    "It's technically not a school shooting. Those are white kids inside the school. This was outside the school..." I said to nobody as I watched students' lives change forever.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    The kids on stage  were watching snapchats and reading tweets from kids in the parking lot. One was of one victim, in a white shirt, covered in blood, his buddy trying to apply pressure. Student A said "That's my math partner. Guess I don't have a math partner any more. Hey kmart, do you think my math teacher will give us an extension on the quiz due today?"

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    When we came off of lockdown into secure perimeter, the kids immediately started singing "When You're An Addams" and doing their choreography. Because that's how theatre kids process trauma. I texted a friend "We've reached the musical theatre portion of the lockdown." The random kids who had been pulled from the front of the school and the lobby, and then thrown into the theatre, sat silently in the house. Theatre kids are weird, and we have proven it yet again.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    When we realized, after an hour, that we could be here multiple hours, we started strategizing where in the theatre we could pee. We were not allowed in the halls. The semi permanent band sub who was stuck with us said brightly "Which part of the stage do you care less about?" We laughed.

The same sub received a text from her father "I saw your car on the news."

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    When the Aurora police banged on the door of the theatre and said "Aurora police, we're coming in" I answered "Thank you, Aurora police." Because theatre.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    When I left, I drove straight to the pub. I hadn't spoken to anyone outside the building all day. When the bartender asked how my day was, I laughed and said "Watch the news". She said "My God, I know right, what the hell is going on?" I took my beer and said "I work there." When I returned later to settle my tab, she quietly told me she had bought my round.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    I’m taking a CLDE class. Nothing is due right now, the assignment is in process, but I’ve been struggling. Today I tried to work on it, only to be embattled emotionally.

    I sent a note with the assignment to my lead teacher: “It is what It is. There are shell casings outside my classroom window. The struggle is real.”

    Scene.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    Things I have said this year, postcards:

    Three weeks ago there was a shooting off campus, involving one of my students.

    He sent me an email “ I have to pass this class to graduate, but I’ve been shot. What can I do to make up the work?”

    My reply boiled down to “Survive senior year, dear. “

       postcard

    An email was sent to me at 11.14 am on Friday, 19 Nov regarding a scholarship recommendation, due by midnight on Friday.

    At 12.05 Friday we went into lockdown.

    Today I submitted the letter of rec, with this note: “My apologies for missing the deadline. We had         a  shooting.”

            Scene.

        The Six Things That Have Driven My Spirit Out Of Teaching

            6 entitled lying students

            5 their entitled, snowplow parents

            4 bullying admin, in kahoots with #5 and #6

            3 covid

    ``       2 Tik Tok Lick Trend

             1 School Shooting

    Nobody is OK. I process by writing. Nobody said you have to read it.

Fiction: Reason #23-

     I teach math in a private high school. It's a middle/high, grades 8 through 12, but I only teach high school.

    I am also an actor.

    I have done musicals all over town, much to the joy of my students, parents and administrators. 

    I love my job. 

    I love being an actor.

    I have no interest in teaching acting, or theatre, I think I would start to hate it. I don't want to teach it to people who don't love it as much as I do. I do that already with math, which I do not love but I do respect.

    All of my theatre gigs went dark during Covid, I was thrilled to be cast in a play and get back to my love. Last night, I opened the first show I have acted in in two years. It seems to be well received, we had reviewers last night. My director just emailed me the review. I sat and read it at lunch just a minute ago. Absolutely glowing, praise for the entire production. I take all review with a grain of salt, but now I think the praise is even louder, the word choice stronger, and I swear they are no longer criticizing the shows, they're celebrating them!

    I just spent almost two years learning every platform known to man to teach my own classes and to attend masters classes. I returned to my building knowing that we were not going to be shown the same "grace" that we are expected to show our students. When I pointed out this inconsistency to my AP, I was told "You're an adult. You can handle it."

    My husband and I had many discussions during what he called 'The Lockdowns', regarding my retirement plan. I openly owned my own mental health crisis, and together we came up with a strategy. We decided that, when the theatres reopened, I would not take the next sugary musical that was offered to me, but look for a play more meaningful. Something to feed my psyche.  This sounds like it would be the opposite of what a teacher needed after such a devastating experience. You would think I'd rather to a comedy, or a silly musical. But I've always been a fan of the Absurdists, and when I can't get my hands on a Beckett, I am drawn to dark realism.

    So when auditions for Bent were announced, it was a no brainer. I have loved every second of this soul ripping drama. Every solitary phrase. It forced me to look at an event worse than what I had lived through, and to attach my own experiences as a gay man. Opening night was not just an opening performance for the audiences, but for all of us on the show. We've been changed on a molecular level. The director has walked with us every moment of the way, supporting our journeys with empathy, and the passion of a man who needs to tell this story.

     I was sitting here ruminating on the last rehearsal, not paying attention to my screen, when an email popped up from my principal.My evaluations are all up to date, there is no reason for her to contact me. I clicked on it

        "Mr. M. It has come to my attention that you are in a theatrical production. Please see Mary to schedule an appointment with me to discuss this."

    I would be lying if I said I didn't see this coming.

   Maybe I chose the show on purpose.

    I did not invite my students, clearly the show is too intense for them.

   But as an actor, I do not want to spend my life doing shows that I find unfulfilling.

    As an administrator, she has no right to tell me what I can and cannot do outside of school.

    What surprised me was this: I was not upset. For the first time in two years, I do not feel anxiety about a decision.

    I will not be making a meeting appointment. I will ignore her email and do my job.

    If she wants to come down here and talk to me, that's her choice.

    Or better yet, come see the show. Talk to me after.

    

Fiction: Reasons To Leave Teaching #13- #22

 #13 Menopause

#14 Found a better job on the outside

#15 School Shootings

# 16 White Savior Movies Starring Michelle Pfeiffer

# 17 Gang Shootings

#18 Gang Fights In The Building

#19 Bullying Admin/Out of Touch Admin

#20 Covid

# 21 The Fallout After Covid

#22 School Shootings

Fiction Reason #32: music teacher

 

    I have been a  middle and high school music teacher for thirty years. 

    I don't want to leave, but I think it's time.

    In thirty years, I have been in six buildings and three districts.

    I stay for five years, then I go. I tell people I'm like Mary Poppins, I go where I'm needed. 

    Which is a bald faced lie, I've always been in privileged schools with strong performing arts programs. All I had to do was swoop in and maintain the status quo. 

    The first time it happened, it seemed natural enough. My first job was a suburban building with an amazing, award winning program. I took over for the teacher who had been there for 25 years. He had left a deep legacy, and it was not difficult to keep the momentum going. After four years, once I began to get to know the kids, I became engaged to my college boyfriend, Kyle. His job was out south, so we decided to move that direction after the wedding. I got hired in the other district easily, as the urban sprawl was getting under way.

    The second time, I was pregnant with my first child, and thought I would take a sabbatical. My building would not allow a sabbatical; my choirs had won many state awards, and they did not want the program to languish for a year under a one year substitute. Their relentless pursuit of trophies was reprehensible. So I quit, and was hired at the middle school-which was, after running two strong programs that frankly Ate My Life, very much like a sabbatical. I stayed there another five years until my son started kindergarten.

    When my son was five, he was in a private school near our home, and I stayed local again and was lucky enough to find a job nearby in a new building that had opened in the still expanding district. Looking back, it's really surprising I was able to switch as frequently as I did, as performing arts jobs are not easy to find. We are usually a one person show, unlike the cores who have teams, and someone usually has to die for one to get hired. 

    I had become aware of my commitment issues with buildings, and started to wonder about the PERA program. If I was going to bounce around, I had to make sure that for  the last three years of my career,  I was working at a high salary. My fourth year I ran into a friend from high school  who was a former teacher. He had only taught a few years before leaving for an investment firm. His specialty was teachers. This would have been 1996  or so, he was convinced the PERA set up was not going to make it through our careers. So I started saving with his firm, and that took the pressure off of me to worry about my last years. I only had to make sure that what I made was enough to bridge the gap left after Kyle's salary.

     The first building I worked at, there was an art teacher who retired after 33 years...in the same building. I remember wondering how somebody does that? The mere idea of walking the same halls for more than a few years makes me cringe. Sure, the building changes, and principals change, and the kids graduate, but it's the same building. I would take a hostage.  And it would likely be an administrator. It's best for everyone that I do not like to stay in one place for too long. I like different choir rooms, different pianos. I like adjusting and bringing in my one box of personal items to display on the desk. I have colleagues who dug into their rooms, and started photo galleries of their choirs on the wall, and banners of every All State and Southwestern Conference with kids' names. I was in  three of those rooms, and I kept up the tradition. But I never started one, and I never ended one. 

    I won't drag on here with every story. As one language arts teacher I worked with used to say "All in all, to sum up, in conclusion", it's been thirty years and six buildings. I survived marriage, raising two children, twelve principals (it's true, one building had a new principal every year for the five years I was there), six student suicides, four fatal student car accidents, five students with cancer, students whose parents were getting divorced, a number of non fatal car accidents, a school shooter, sibling deaths, musicals, concerts, state choirs, my own divorce and teaching choir online.

    I did online very well. I taught the tonal qualities of water in a glass based on how full it was and the thickness of the glass. We made string instruments from yarn and dining room chairs. They sang their hearts out into Sound Trap, and I spent hours editing it into a choir.

    And in August of 2021, I realized the kids I had been teaching online were the top 10% of my classes. Those who cared. The rest...did not. You can't run a choir program that has 150 students enrolled and only 15 that are committed to showing up, learning music, and performing. This is simply a fact. Because we were remote, I had been fooled. Once they arrived in class, live in person, late, in pajamas and addicted to their cell phones, I realized I had been duped. Sadly. I blame my age.

    This year, which everyone keeps saying is "after" Covid (but that's ridiculous and all thinking people know it, we're still dealing with a pandemic) has been the hardest. THAT is true. The expectations on teachers have not relaxed, and our kids have been taught during remote learning that the expectations for them are so low for success, they really only have to wake up and show up. This year was harder than any of the previous 29 years. Period. It broke the back of the choir I was working with, even though I did everything I could to keep them interested online. I've never taught so much history or allowed days of karaoke;  I created music lessons with glasses of water, and with found objects and spent hours mixing their individual recorded voices into a "choir". I believed that the kids were actually getting something out of this debacle. I thought we "made" it.  

    Then when they returned, they just couldn't get to class on time anymore. They were bringing blankets, wearing slippers and refusing to put away their phones. They talked incessantly and can't sit still for an entire class period. Our fall concert was disappointing, they waited until the day before to learn their choreography, and the entire tenor section was out sick the week before the concert, causing me unprecedented  anxiety. The holiday concert will be only slightly better, as I have kids out sick every day, and for days on end, and they can't rehearse. I was going to feature the smaller groups more, but out sick is out sick, and you can't learn your harmonies from home on your chrome book. I have never been this exhausted, and frustrated, and angry. 

    For the first time in thirty years, I wake up in a great mood and by the time I walk in the building, I'm already mad.

    So, after thirty years, it's time to go.

   

  

Fiction Reason #13

 

    I have been a special education teacher for only two years, and one of them  was in remote/hybrid learning.

    While I have been bitten and punched, I have never been knocked out or had furniture thrown at me.

    When I did my student teaching, my mentor teacher told me she had a chair smashed across her back a few years ago in a different building, and she spent the rest of the year recovering from a broken back. Other teachers have stories of furniture thrown, being hit accidentally by students who do not understand what they are doing and being bitten. They all stayed in the profession. I've heard all the stories, and yet I kept going.

    Today I was waiting in the center classroom for the students to return from specials. I received a phone call from security that one of our paras was being taken to the hospital. She has been with us only a few months. When I went downstairs, I got the following story:

            The para was accompanying the student to his art class. He became dysregulated by a passing general education student who bumped into him, then called him a "fucking retard", and moved on. The special education student turned to the para and physically picked her up off of the ground and smashed her into the wall twice. She crumpled unconscious onto the floor, and the student then entered the art room. When asked where his para was, he shrugged.

    She is nineteen years old. She makes $15 an hour and my first thought was that I should be the one to call her mother..

    I watched them put her into the ambulance, and was told I had to escort the student back to the center classroom.

    I did, and then I sat down at my computer and wrote my letter of resignation.

Fiction: Reason #100

 

    She sat on the couch in the principal's office, wondering what it felt like to have a private bathroom.

    As the newspaper sponsor in the building, she had been called into this office on several occasions. Every principal she had in the building seemed to need a tutorial on student's rights to freedom of speech. She had only been in the building for five years, this was her fourth principal. She'd joked that she was the Principal Trainer, like How To Train Your Dragon. She was always the first under fire, and she was always in the right, and the new principal did not seem to know what the students' rights were  before calling her in.

    She knew what it was about. A senior, who had spent their entire junior year in remote learning, wrote an opinion piece on the vaccine numbers in the district. They had cited research from the local health authorities, interviewed parents and students, and concluded that the truth of remote learning slowing the spread of Covid will never be known, because parents did not have their students tested. It was widely known within the district that parents were sending kids to school with coughs and fevers, then not answering the phone when the school called. The student did not get any parents to admit this, but it was an "open secret" in the community. A twisted take on "don't ask, don't tell".

    The student reported had been visibly frustrated while originally writing an article on remote and hybrid teaching in the district. They said they could tell adults were lying to them, and had asked to write an opinion piece instead. As the sponsor, she had cautioned the student against any language that would be incindiary, or misunderstood as name calling. Teaching journalism in 2021 had become more difficult than when she started ten years ago. Students had to be taught what a fact was and how to research it without any real examples to pull from, professionally.

    The principal entered, five minutes after the meeting was scheduled and said "Good afternoon, Mr. Stern,".

    She was not ready to do battle for herself. She thought this meeting was about the kids, not the principal's complete disdain for her gender status. After three years hiding her true self from admin and students on the western slope, she'd thought she had landed in a safe building. High socioeconomics, ninety percent of the parents had college degrees, LGBTQ club, two openly gay teachers and the median age of the teachers in the building was 46. 

    That was last year, before the new principal. She had not experienced any problems with staff or the previous administration mis-gendering her. She had not told her students, it was stressful enough to go through the process  as a teacher and she had decided in two years, she would leave teaching altogether in order to complete the transition. 

    This particular principal, a PhD educated woman who had clearly thought the building she had been hired to captain was closer to Harvard than a public school, had made it clear she would not be referring to Chris as "she/her". Chris knew the union would back her, but because she had not known the topic of the meeting, she had entered the office alone. Rookie mistake, experienced teachers know to A) ask for clarification of the meeting topic and B) never go to an admin meeting alone.

    The fight was going to be a long one. She had talked to the union and other teachers who had been forced into legal action. They all won, and their prize was to be returned to the same building under the same administration. 

    At that moment, she made a choice.

    "I am she, you have been asked repeatedly to gender me correctly."
    "That is irrelevant. I'm here to address a complaint from a student," she sat, crossing her ankles and staring through Chris' soul.    

       "Where is the union rep? I won't have this meeting without the union."

       "We can clear it up  here and now. The student claims you made inappropriate sexual r