Sunday, November 13, 2011

Drop It Like It's Hot

If you walk into any school in America and ask a student, teacher, or staff member what the elective classes are, they will be able to tell you. It’s likely that the first thing that they tell will tell you is that Music is an elective class. When this happens, if you would be so kind as to forcefully punch that person in the face, I would greatly appreciate it. To music teachers, the word “elective” is offensive. It would be like commenting on someone’s hair lip, lazy eye, or female patterned baldness. You just don’t do it…even if that bald spot is so shiny you can see your face in it! In New York, Music class is MANDATED!!! I don’t know where the administrative bastards got the word “elective” from, but I am pretty sure that they pulled it out of their ass and are using it as a way to section us off from “the real” subjects.  The last time I checked, music was a REAL subject. In music we read (Both music and text), we write (When those little bastards are playing the keyboards when I am talking, you bet I give them a writing assignment) we posses a skill set, and we give assessments to monitor student progress and evaluate learning. This sounds pretty real to me. We don’t just pop in “My World 2.0” by The Biebs, light a cigarette, and let the kids have a period of “chill time.” No, we teach. The douche bags that came up with the term elective were probably students that were seated last in band, or tried out for the solo in chorus and didn’t get it, or were “Tree #4” in their high school musical. They have a score to settle because they are bitter, and most likely, talentless. 

Other synonyms to “electives” are, “Specials”, “Exploratorys”, “Excursions”, or “Optionals.” SERIOUSLY? Who thought that THOSE were better? Every time I hear those words it makes me want to do some “exploring” with my foot into their ass, or to make an “excursion” out to their car and cut the break lines. WINNING!!! 

In addition to the offensive slurs they call Music listed above, some people feel the need to further distance themselves from the arts by creating names for their content area that “put us music slackers in our place”. These include the terms “academics” and “core classes.” I hope that these people fall off of their pedestals and break their necks or that the high horse they’re riding bucks them and hoof stomps their skull. Last time I checked, music is an academic subject, as are Art and Foreign Language. I went to a real accredited college, took real classes, and got a real degree. How is that for academic?

But somehow, this point of view remains the minority.  The students and other teachers feel the need to treat you like peasants or serfs (yeah history teachers! I know all about that! I’M SMART). The part that annoys the hell out of me is when teachers pull kids out of my classes to make-up tests, or quizzes, or other work when they were absent. WHO THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?!?!?!?!?!?! I have a job to do and because the kid wasn’t finished with YOUR test you think it is OK to keep them during MY class to finish it. I’m sorry, I must have just had an aneurism, because I don’t understand your thought process. I am pretty sure that if their work is not finished, that is YOUR problem. They should not be missing my class at all. Not only is this incredibly unprofessional, inconsiderate, and insulting, it’s a total double standard. Any Math, Science, English, or History teacher would gut me like a fish if I kept students after class to finish a Music project or assignment. And they have no problem telling you that either. They will tell you that your subject isn’t as important and ask you why you have the gall to interrupt their instruction time. This can be witnessed almost any time a student asks to go to band or choir lessons during one of those “oh so precious ‘core’ classes”. And if your lesson happens to land during an AP class, forget it. You might as well have your leg caught in a bear trap, because there is no way in hell you’re going to that lesson. I understand that it can be frustrating to have your students leave class, but please understand, we start teaching the students their instruments and how to sing properly YEARS after their first exposure to Math or Reading, so cut us some slack, because we’re expected to catch up to you. 

As a student, I went to choir lessons all the time. I used the “lessons excuse” more times than should be possible. It was my male equivalent to girls having their “female time” only it wasn’t gross, I could talk about it without feeling awkward, and it got me out of more than gym. I am most likely the reason that teachers are so pissed when their students have lessons. I never went to class if I could help it. In high school, I took health my Junior year and by “took health” I mean that, as far as my transcript was concerned, I was enrolled in that class. I can count the number of full classes I went to on one hand. Coach C was incredible, he never cared about me going to lessons. He was 2 years from retirement and was smart enough to realize that I was never going to participate in gratuitous drug use or have unprotected sex and get someone pregnant. I was already a lifeguard, so I had my CPR certification, I regularly donated blood, and possessed this amazingly scarce quality called common sense. As far as High School Health was concerned, I was good. 

I also remember being able to “catch up” if missing a class. I would get the notes from someone else and would talk to the teacher about what I missed at the beginning of the next class. In my experiences, most students nowadays are incapable of doing this. They are completely de-railed if they miss even one precious moment of their “core classes.” Seriously? I know things have changed since I was in school, but I am pretty sure students are not learning to cure cancer in 6th Grade Reading/Language Arts. Most likely, they are learning about prepositions, reading “Hatchet” or “Tuck Everlasting”, and are writing poorly constructed paragraphs about what they did the previous weekend. These kids could catch up if they were smart enough to learn the preposition song (to the tune of Yankee Doodle), rent the movie of the book they’re reading, which most likely went straight to video, and bullshitted what they did that weekend, because frankly, your teacher doesn’t give a rats ass about how you spend your free time. You could have gone to the moon and back and they would still hate you, so stop trying so hard. 

And then, if it didn’t suck enough that the kids leave your class all the time to construct that precious diorama about the Sioux Indian Tribe and you can’t dare remove them from their precious “How do you make a potato float?” lab in science, when those little bastards ARE there, they think that they have all the power…oh yeah, that happens. You would not believe how many kids will come to chorus and say “you’re lucky I’m even here!” Really, this is lucky? I didn’t realize that lucky was feeling like the piano falling on you would bring the sweet release of death you have been yearning for. No, you’re the lucky ones…lucky that I can’t tell you that you’re most likely going to fail out of high school, change your name to Trixi…with an “I”, and spend some time in the slammer after your 40 year old boyfriend ODs on the Coke you were snorting in your hotel bathroom. Yes, it’s true, your future is bleak. But I can’t say anything. What I can do is fail you, because not only are you a 4’3” tall future Maury Povich star, you also can’t sing. Their class attendance is like a Kardashian marriage…it only lasts for 72 days, then they leave ( LOVE YOU KIM!!!). However, unlike my obvious love for all things Kardashian adjacent, I hate these kids. It makes my job so much harder, because then they are behind and then I am expected to get them up to snuff. It doesn’t always happen. I’m not Annie Sullivan, I can’t sit there for hours with you signing “water” waiting for you to screech “wa-wa” back to me. I have 30-75 other people I have to worry about. 

Then the time comes when the student realizes that he/she is not doing well. They are shocked and appalled that they did not receive the 100 that they so deserved! How dare you, the teacher, bully them like this. Sure, they never sing, they leave your class all the time to do “research” for a “project”, they are always talking, and if you call them out on it, they will tell you to bite them, but damn it, they are BRILLIANT!!! Why can’t you see that?!? Then they say the 3 words that they expect you to curl up and die at…”I’M GONNA DROP.” When your face doesn’t curl up into a withered mask of sheer horror and your heart does not fail, causing you to collapse, they are, again, puzzled. They pulled the big card…the academic equivalent of saying FUCK YOU! They just delivered their verbal shot to the groin and the fact that you are not doubled over, eyes watering, testicles swelling is unfathomable to even their 7th grade know it all minds. When I think of how I respond to this situation, I can think only of the Grinch, that scene in the movie when Cindy Loo Hoo asks him what he is doing with the Christmas tree. The Grinch suddenly becomes caring and loving and puts the child’s fears to bed with his sweet demeanor and hidden agenda. That’s me. I know that the students are unable to drop the class. The sweetest thing is that THEY don’t know they’re not allowed to drop. And let’s be honest, these kids wouldn’t take any classes if they were allowed to drop the ones where they don’t like the teacher. I very nicely tell them “Well, if that’s how you feel…”, and they leave, all high and mighty, like one of the New Jersey housewives, but sober and with smaller hair. Just as they think they’re really “stickin’ it to the man” I am sitting there, quietly satisfied, knowing that as I sit there, their poor little dreams are being slashed into pieces, like a teenage cheerleader in a horror movie. 

My favorite part about this whole situation is that it is usually followed by excellent behavior by the student in the classes immediately following their administrative beat down. It’s like watching animals in their natural habitat. I feel like Jane Goodall because I too deal with smelly hairy primates. 

There are several different reasons/emotions that motivate this new behavior. One is that the students are simply defeated and sit there in class, quietly singing, as if they were the poor little match girl after she lights her last match in the cold Denmark air and then promptly freezes to death. Then there are the ones who are secretly plotting your demise. I always envision these kids going home, smearing on some war paint, donning some camo, referencing a rudimentary map of the school, done in crayon of course, and considering whether it would be easier to drop a piano on you, or dig and cover a big hole and hope you fall into it. It’s very “Home Alone.” These are the ones that think that you go home at the end of the day and cry because they don’t like you. They have changed their outward assault on your mental capacity to a much more subtle but lethal method. Either way I look at it, they have still shut the hell up! Then there are the “Born Agains.” These are the kids who have “seen the light.” Their main goal is to smother you with how amazing they are. They are helpful, they participate, and they always ask you how you are doing. They make Mother Theresa look like a drunk ex con. And finally, there are the ones who just don’t care. These kids break your heart. Every teacher’s main goal is to get through to their students, to reel them in, to help them be successful. These are the kids that cut the line, who slip from your grip, who don’t need you. That’s the rough part. You don’t hate the kids, you hate the behavior, you hate the situation, and most of all, you hate the fact that you’ve tried everything and they are still resistant…It’s a terrible hopeless feeling, like going to grandma’s and having to sit through the Matlock marathon while she offers you butterscotch and works on her needlepoint. 

Is nice to know that, in this situation, the administration has been exceptionally supportive of me and my other fellow “specials” teachers, even if they do plan on cutting me from the budget and allowing kids to be taken out of my class to do other work.