Milton Berg

  

        We are as famous for our yearly iceberg as we are our leg lamp. There are four houses on the west side of the street who share the same, giant berg. It begins in January, when the temperatures dip low enough to freeze any snow that the sun has the audacity to melt during the few hours it is able to dapple through the dense line of trees that guard the berg. 

         We've been here over 20 years. I have a memory of the neighborhood association leaving a note on the garage door the first two years, then they ceased bothering us. It is clear that we have no control, and they got tired of risking their life to cross the thing and endanger their own life just to leave a note stating the obvious: "Your iceberg is treacherous". 

          Our neighbor has a snow blower. It makes no difference. We had a snow blower. The tire blew out. The Berg is The Boss of our driveway from January to April, every year. Walk your dog on the east side. The west side is impassable. Delivery trucks get stuck trying to turn around. Last year an Amazon truck was stranded so thoroughly that neighbors from both sides emerged with towels and shovels and carpet scraps, It took four of them to finally just push the truck into the street. The mail man bounces around like he's crossing the lunar surface. Last night a Jeep who had been to visit our neighbor, got stuck turning around. A Jeep.

           It's been around so long, I've finally named it: Milton Berg.

           I think I'm funny.

            

I Can't

 

    I was told to give the kids grace. When I asked if I could have some grace, as my mental health is also shredded, I was told I was an adult and I'm fine. The district provides Meru therapists, which are great if all you have is some stress, but useless for the deep aching malaise that has gripped me. So.

    I hate it here. 

    To be clear, "here" is not a specific location, but it contains a location.

    It is location, mental anxiety, societal discourse, political bantering, public school politics, over worked, under paid, supply chain issues, no spaghetti sauce in the store, grocery strikes, school shootings, church shootings, no bus drivers, no subs, no consequences for behaviors..."here". Here is where I hate it.

    Here.

    The kids were not OK two years ago. Now I can't engage them at all. My content is unique in that it relies on engagement and teamwork to function. It's not math, where if half the class checks out it doesn't effect the entire class. Even in choir, the teacher can sing with them, and at them, and there are at least enough kids singing to get some sound. Theatre isn't choir. I'm not teaching all the altos the same notes. They have to rehearse on their own to perform scenes. Improv doesn't work if fifteen people stand in a circle with their arms folded in front of them, or decide to sit down, or worse, dicking around in the tormentors or jumping off the end of the stage. It's worse than ferrets on acid.

    I do not have the energy to continue to force people who do not want to be in theatre in the first place to participate in the second place, or even sit down in the third place and in the fourth place, not ignore me entirely when we're reading a play, put their head down and pretend to go to sleep. 

    This is school. You're in a class. Really?

    Exacerbating the situation is the attendance crisis. 

    Riddle me this: If only ten kids are enrolled, and four show up on a regular basis--maybe six on a good day--and those four are never the same four, how to you rehearse scenes?

    If six show up, and improv sounds like it may work, but all six stand in a circle staring at one another, refusing to participate, how do you play improv games?

    (And mime is not something you can do every day for weeks on end, so no. Not mime, either. Why? Because they have to stand up and participate, which seems to be the core of the issue.)

    Answer: print a ton of two person scenes and do them every day as one offs. No real rehearsal, no character work, not even a real acting class: just an entire semester of enunciation, projection, location  and props. Lather, rinse, repeat.

    OR, read plays. Sit in the classroom and read plays. And then don't do scenes, because nobody shows up regularly, or cares enough to memorize lines. So...read another play. Lather, rinse, repeat.

    And stop class every time someone starts talking because it's rude to talk while others are reading, and they forget from one day to the next that it is rude. They've forgotten, one day to the next, for six months now.

    31 kids enrolled. At the moment, 16 are present. Of those, four are actually working on a scene for next week. The other 12 do not care. They've managed to maintain an astounding F average since August. Six of them have flat 0.0%. Impressive. It takes effort to honestly do nothing, every single day.

    And... I relentlessly harass what now feel like feral animals to put away the cell phone. Put It Away. I don't want to see it. I will wait. I am standing directly over you. I know you can see me. I know you can hear me. Did you really just put your head down on your computer and pretend to go to sleep? Is that what just happened? You know I'll call your mom. You are fourteen years old. Do not make me email your mom again, dude, seriously. You know how to behave in school. Do you---

    "What did you just say?" I look at the Latino sophomore across the room. "Feel free to repeat it," I intend this to be a challenge. I know what I heard. It was not nice. It was not kind. It was not necessary. It was racist. 

    "Nothin', Miss," he stares at me blankly. Eyes completely devoid of any intellect or emotion. Flat. 0.0% of feeling.

    "You will never use that word in my room again."

    At that, he and his buddy turn and walk out of the room. All I can do is put a note in IC that they have left before class was over. No consequences. Nobody Cares. Fun fact: when kids show up to class for attendance, and then bail, I cannot mark them absent. They are not 'tardy', because they were present. So, I am to mark them 'present', even though they are not. They know that, and therefore do not care about staying in class.

    Two girls stroll in fifteen minutes late. I already marked them tardy because I know they'll be late. Nobody cares if they're late, and they do not care that they have an F. I have no backup, and am not allowed to use attendance or tardies as grades. So there is no consequence for being late. None. They are marked in IC as tardy and miss the first part of class. That's it. I fought this in August, but gave up by Christmas when I realized that Nobody Cares.

     And now, on 4 Feb, you can add me to the list of people who do not care.

    I. Hate. It. Here.