On Nostalgia.

It will be two years since I have finished my teaching credential program and I'm not the angry frustrated sub that started this blog, but rather a man stuck in career limbo, with a side job as a sub. This blog is of course a time to reflect on the past couple of years, but what got me here was a very simple question; " Mr. C do you remember my name?!"

When I started this blog I was pretty wound up, for a number of factors; I was dealing  planter fasciitis, which of course was misdiagnosed by an incompetent doctor. My initial diagnosis was arthritis, which lead me to see a rheumatologist, who in turn put me in debt just to tell me I had no inflammatory diseases.   I had just come off of close to a year of an average of 4 hours of sleep.  I certainly was not ready for an interview, my health was deplorable after months of fast food microwave pizzas and no exercise. To top it off I had broken it off with my girlfriend at the time, under duress?  I was not stressed, I -was- stress. I embodied what it meant to be stressed out, this manifested itself physically and mentally and though some have said that I kept a cool exterior, inside I was riddled with depression and anxiety.

At the very least I'm hoping my musings were amusing, it was a good start to a very long recovery process. This process has also included flying (plug plug!), numerous shoe insoles, of which I think I have found some effective ones, and though my eating habits are not immaculate I have ventured through some much better eating habits over the last couple of years. All in all I feel better than I have in two years! Looking back there was a time where I could barely walk, let alone play basketball, as I did today. It makes me optimistic that I will some day return to some great past times; Aikido, rock climbing, Airsoft, etc.

The other day while at the high school I came across one the students from my student teaching class, and she simply asked me "Hey Mr. C! Do you remember my name?" To be honest I had to look at the roll sheet to remember, but it just struck me as to how such a simple request can have such an impact on your future relationship with your students. It also struck me that this simple inquiry said so much about how the students need some kind of individuality, they want to stand out in the crowd, even if it is just to a lowly student teacher like myself.  High school is so full of emotions, fears and hormones that it's easy to forget that teachers are there to kind of mitigate all this chaos and students are always seeking out those teachers who can accomplish this job the best and give them some kind of direction within the fog.

I really enjoyed my student teaching, I made mistakes, the kids made mistakes, but we all accomplished what we were there for; The kids learned history from me and I learned more about teaching than I can ever express.  I have certainly been disenchanted with the profession since because; I have not gotten a single interview, I still have some nightmare classes and the prospect of more stress, lots more work from my class and BTSA is a little unsettling. To top it all off I am so far removed from my training and making lesson plans the first 3 years would be relearning and settling in, but I suppose that would be the start of just about any career. On the other hand  I still hold that if given the opportunity I would accept my own class. Having my own class is what really made teaching for me, I loved my kids and it always brings a smile to my face when I do see them.

I'm not sure if I will ever be a full time secondary school teacher, but I will remember this very important lesson my students have taught me lately, just remember their name, it really does mean that much to them.

Combining Jobs

School Site: CHS
Subject: Spanish

My 3 hours of sleep was abruptly interrupted by the Imperial March, my ringtone, at 5:30am today. The nice automated lady came on asking for my password, she's so rude, she never does formalities. I listen to the assignment, and instead of pressing '2' to hear the assignment again, I press '1', sealing my fate for the day. Every ounce of my grumpy sleep deprived body tells me to go online and cancel the assignment, except for the ounce that needs money, and ultimately that wins out.


Mi Espanol es bien en los areas que lo usan mucho, en mi trabajo por ejemplo.  But to teach spanish the whole day, to spanish speakers? This task seemed much more daughting. I arrived on time, unfortunately the other teacher who was supposed to give me the assignment arrives 10 minutes before the start of school. By the time his computer has loaded up and he has translated the email from the teacher I'm subbing for, I'm left with the following instructions.

"Ask the students where they are in the book, and have them do the next assignment."

Yeah, ok, unfortunately students can't remember what they had for lunch, let alone what they did before their vacation. Never fear though because I am a war veteran by now, and I know how to dance.

Period 1: 

This was English 1, I did not feel they would be advanced enough for a writing assignment, so I did assigned them something out of the book, I survived without consequence.

Periods 3-6: Spanish for Spanish Speaker

 I had a blast improving a lesson today. During my prep period, which was second period, I decided to do a writing assignment based on video games. I am, afterall," The GameStop Guy," might as well embrace it.

I explained to the students that I work at GameStop in Colton and that I get a lot of Spanish speaking customers, my vocabulary is unfortunately limited so I had them help me out. I had them help me translate words pertaining to the games I was trying to sell, and then I tried to sell the game to the class in Spanish.  

The resulting assignment looked a little like this.

Halo 4	1 Space   2 Aliens 3 FPS 4 Online 5 Coma 6 Extra Online Content	1 Espacio 2 Extra Tereste 3 Primer Persona 4 Enlina 5 Coma 6. Extra cosas avancadas
Call Of Duty Black Ops II	1 War 2 Futuristic 3 Robots 4 Zombies 5 Co- Op	1 Guerra 2 En El Futuro 3 Robo 4 Zombies 5 Equipo De Dos or Mas
Assassins Creed III	1 Civil War 2 Native Americans 3 Graphics 4 Assassin 5 Hack and Slash 6 Open World	1 Guerra Civil 2 Nativo Americano 3 Buena Graficos 4 Assesino 5 Contrar y Trajar 6 Mundo Abierto

After each set of words I would try to sell the one game, then move on to the next game, translate some more words, and try to make my explanation better. At the end I had them try to sell me something, anything, on their own paper, in Spanish, and within a minimum of 5 sentences.

The result was a lot of fun, even if a lot of the girls were not wholey interested in the subject matter, they were very engaged with translating the words. I felt pretty accomplished with this assignment. The kids were engaged, I snuck in some learning, and it killed 1/2 hour of an otherwise loud and long babysitting gig. I cannot say that it had wholey renewed my vigor to teach, but I certainly found that feeling that first drew me to teaching, I thought it was long gone, turns out it's a drug for me, unfortunately I need stronger doses to keep the buzz going.

Dr. Gabe and Mr. Sub

Substituting from day to day makes me feel like I have split personalities, this may be more of a personality trait than a reaction to substituting, but I digress. My day is governed by so many factors; kids (32 different ones every 50 minutes), location, age, etc, the only constant I have is that I wake up at 6am, if I have a job and I get out of school, eventually, sometime during the daylight hours. Everything that happens in between is  anyone's guess. Take my last 3 days for example, (no really);

School Site: THMS: 

Subject: Math

I have substituted for this teacher multiple times, both back when I was more of a Nazi than a babysitter, and also during my more apathetic days, so I knew, more or less, how his class worked, and how his students felt about him/ treated him.   

Monday

I was a little apprehensive to enter this class, I did not hear the name correctly, but I liked the school site so I accepted it anyway, and later found out it was a class I have had previous rough experiences with. I started this day expecting to write out a lot of detentions, send kids to the office, just the usual rigmarole that comes with 8th graders. What I got in return was this weird parallel universe where the kids were well behaved, most students were on task, and in general just a pleasantly surprising nice day. 

The only thing to note was a kid with ADD who added "Your mom... " to everything that was being said. I gave him taste of his own medicine when he was commenting " how is this possible?" and I responded "You're mom is possible." This was met with a roar of "OOOOOOOOOOOooooooooo" from the class, but I think the kid took it well, I haven't received any angry phone calls... yet. Yeah, we were real mature in there that day.

Tuesday

Apparently my nausea in the morning was my transition back into the real world because the little hellions were back! These are block classes, so I am held captive by the children of lord of the flies for 2 hours at a time. The first block of classes was ok, and then it rapidly went downhill from there. 

The second block of classes want to listen to their ipods during class, so I gave them some incentive yesterday, if everyone finished their work I would let them listen to their ipods, which worked great yesterday, but if I had done that today I would be punishing those who were on task unnecessarily.  The down side to this is the knuckleheads who "don't feel like doing work," (man I wish I had that option at my job), continue to do nothing but chat about their very important middle school lives (?) But hey, they are freshmen now, there isn't going to be a whole lot of hand holding in high school, better they realize the consequences now. I told this one girl I would tell her dad she was not working when I saw him at job #2, to which she whined and complained saying how uncool it was that I was threatening her just to get her to do work. I let her know this was a no threat, I am more than happy to let parents know how their kids are doing =D. She completed a total of one assignment, out of 2,  in the two hours she was there, I do not consider this being productive, can't wait to see her dad next time. 

The third block is usually a little more productive but as I mentioned different kids produce different results. There was a student here today who was not here yesterday, and  he made all the difference. It started off with a pencil being given to him to which he replies to the girl " This smells funny, I know what you've been doing with this, that's gross," and then he proceeds to throw the pencil haphazardly behind him. I told him to pick it up three times, each time a little more sternly, to which he replies " it really does smell though..." so I wrote him down for a detention. He comes to me later and says " Hey I picked up the pencil can I get my name off of the list?" Um, No, how about doing it the first time and not giving me crap about it, and how about doing some work too, he says again "because it smelled..." He comes to me  a second time " Hey I've been doing work, and I picked up that pencil... it really did smell..." as if I'm blind and have not seen him playing a game with other classmates the whole time. Then to top this off, I'm assuming on a dare, he rocks this kid in the nads, running start and everything. There is no altercation but don't touch another student like that in front of me!  " Really dude? You expect me to take your name off of the list?" I call security and have him escorted out. 

School site: BHS

Subject: Math

Wednesday

Today I am peacefully blogging in a Trig/Calc/ AVID class. A rowdy game of UNO, but no nut shots.

Humans are creatures of habit, I order the same thing every time I go to Lucille's, prisoner's feel more comfortable in prison because they have a routine much in the same way students need a schedule and some sort of pattern to their school day in order to progress academically. I don't feel that as a substitute I have achieved this pattern-like day for myself. I ran into someone today who was hired at the school site I am at, but finished the credential program at the same time I did. On the one hand I feel a little defeated, she has come out ahead partially because she chose Math and I chose History. On the other hand I am insanely happy for her and it gives me hope that I too will get to my own classroom.  Her trials and tribulations have been equally as hard as my own because she started two months ago, at the end of the year, her students are low level, and she gotten comments like "I forget I need to go slower for you because you are an ELL," from her fellow colleagues. Despite all this it's encouraging to see that someone from my school made it, even if it's only temporary. 

So, to go back where it all started, I feel like I have two personalities, regular, everyday, calm, blogging in the back Dr. Gabe, and Anxious, calling security, writing up referrals Mr. Sub. I still feel it will be an incredible relief to get a full time position, even if everything else is still chaotic, it will be nice to have that constant in my life. 

It feels like I am still on the river while many of my friends have set up camp on the banks, lucky for me I've always viewed life from an Easter perspective and so I go with the flow.  I'm still optimistic for my life though, and hey, if I didn't have such a crazy experiences, what would I write about?

The Problem with Kids These Days.

Aside from having good parenting I was a pretty amiable kid. When someone said shut up, I usually shut up, If a teacher was talking I listened, and I can remember all of 1 time in which I had OCS in 7th grade, in fact I can't remember where OCS was in high school, that's how many times I went there.

I've said it once but I will say it again, I do not understand the motivation behind being a rude or disrespectful kid. Where is the payoff? They get the immediate satisfaction of "besting an elder in front of their peers," but this victory is short lived once they are in the principles office or have some other sort of behavior correction. The last couple of days have given me a couple of examples of kids who have been just Rude.

School site : CHS

Ssubject: English

I've kind of let go of my tough guy exterior, I used to try to yell and scream at the kids but this was never really productive, I was never convincing enough or the situation would just backfire on me. So as a substitute I have been much more reactive, you do something wrong you get punished for it, kind of like the real world, if you break the law there are consequences. I was having trouble with this class in general, they were all at risk students so I was actually pretty liniment, one thing I will not tolerate however, is rudeness. During the second part of this class I mentioned that I would not allow cell phones out, they are not supposed to be out any way. Well one male student had his out and I gave him plenty of chances to put it away, he was grumpy but not rude. The female student next to him took this to the next level. She placed her book in front of her phone, to "hide it." I told her it does no good, I know you are still on your phone, please put it away. To which she responded by displaying her phone more prominently and giving me a " I don't give a damn what you say" look. So off to in-house she went. Really, I assure you,your conversation was not worth getting a referral over. I'm sorry was I infringing on your time during my time? Yeah, it doesn't work that way.

School site: BMS

Subject : History

I finally get to teach a little bit, I have all of an hour to put my lecture together, but this should remind me why I wanted to teach, right? Well during my lecture I finally get the kids to settle down, except for one student sho kept making a gaging noise when I talk. I asked him to stop, and he starts arguing " I didn't do anything, " sure you did that's why I called you out, there is more arguing, really all he needed to do is be quiet at this point and concede that he was being rude but no he steps it up by saying, " be quiet with your stupid goatee." I.E. please give me a referral. The old substitute me would have huffed, puffed and sent him out, instead I was calm continued my lecture an wrote him a referral.

Once again where is the motivation? If I talk and I'm a jerk then I will be the greatest ever. The greatest what? It really makes no sense to me, and all of this animosity because you simply can not shut your mouth? It boggles the mind.

Last, but certainly not least,

School site:BMS

Ssubject: History

Same day by the way, next period. I've had this student in the past, somewhere along the way I lost his respect and this is always the hardest because I do not feel effective as a teacher, and these kids have even less respect for a sub than normal. He will not read, he will not stop talking, and even after I ask him to stop he just continues being a neusance. Even the RSP sub has taken notice to this kids behavior. When I tell him I'm going to write him up he says" it's just a piece of paper, it doesn't mean anything…" 

I should mention that this kid has "identified special needs," but honestly I think he us just BSing. He's a smart kid, I know he is, but he has been allowed to get away with murder for so long that no one questions it. His whole motivation has been to see how much of a rise he can get out of the substitute, so I've kind of played it poker faced with this kid, so far is has been a better avenue, we'll see, I know this is not the last I have seen of him. 

This kid kept talking throughout my whole lesson, so i wrote him a referral. 

UPDATE: I had this kid for two periods today, I was definitely concerned, but I did my poker face routine and he was actually a lot better today. He would get up out of his chair and I would ask him to go back to it, and this was much better than trying to compete with him. I let him know he could ruin everyone's break if he was not quiet during the movie, and he was even quiet. 

So I did not emphasize it too much in my description of the days incidents but the problem with kids these days are their parents. In fact the kid in the last story had his parents pick him up early because he didn't feel like staying, this is of course his parents enabling this type of behavior. If I acted a fool like this and I got a call home, and a referral, there would have been consequences. Does this not happen now adays? I realize, once again that I had great parents and my mentality was never to defy them, or anyone of authority for that matter, but is there no motivation to just not be a jerk now these days? I can, by no means, claim to be an expert on parenting, but I have always lived by the ideal that you should treat others as you would want to be treated, but if everyone is being treated the way these little jerks treat me, then I am afraid for the future. I know things are not all rainbows and flowers, but if would be nice if they could treat the other human being in the room decently for the whole 60 minutes they may ever see them in their life. 

Substitute teaching continues to be a challenge, my abilities, and my motivation, are put into question almost everyday, but I forge on bravely, or stupidly, really it is hard to tell. 

The Drifter

School site: CHS
Subject: Where ever the heck they put me.

The holidays wiped me out. Retail is absolutely brutal that way, the funniest part is the majority of the stress came from our lack of trained staff. They were trained enough to preform their jobs, but certainly not psychologically prepared for what they would encounter. This of course is a post for different blog, so on to today's, insanity(?)

I've mentioned once or twice how impersonal substituting is. The mentality I receive most days is " you're not my real teacher..." which is followed promptly by bout of apathy regarding the person conducting the class. Don't get me wrong some classes are great, but this is often brought about by great teachers who have set a calm atmosphere for the class, a routine, and ultimately have some kind of personal connection to their students. This is what they taught us in our credential program, and it is evident in some classes, but if I had great classes everyday this would be a very boring blog.

I don't think I have found a less personal experience than being a roving sub. My assignment this week was to watch some classes while the teachers went to discuss a student's Individual Education Plan or IEP. These are for students who have been identified as having trouble in their classes. This student could have special needs ranging from bad vision to an auditory processing problem. Basically if the student needs specialized attention for a learning disability that has been -identified- if will be in this IEP and all teachers who have student will have to adhere to these guidelines.

So basically the teacher is out for a period, at the most, and many teachers do not have a sub plan written out for this occasion, I mean it's only one class. So I have encountered classes where I just sat and watched them goof off the whole time, to classes where they had a PowerPoint set up for the students to take notes on. This kind of amused me because before they left they did not really go over much of the content of the PowerPoint, but rather teaching me how to run the PowerPoint. I was polite because they obviously do not know my background, but seriously? I am well aware of how to run a PowerPoint. These were very simplistic explanations too, I mean

" So, just press the arrow forward to go forward, and press it back if you need to go to the previous slide, remember there are different things going on during the slides so press the 'forward' or 'back' arrow"

"Yeah, got it... "

The structure brought on by the teacher I'm subbing for is what I often rely on to have a decent day, but in these cases I only have an hour to really get accustomed to this structure. On a normal day I only see the students for an hour anyway, but I'm able to get a feel for the impact the teacher has made on their students. Do the students hate them? Are there pieces of  " I love (teacher)" art everywhere? Does the teacher's desk look like a tornado hit it? These are all indicators of the kind of day I'm going to have. I can also get a feel for the type of students I'm going to encounter based on the first couple of periods, there are of course exceptions to this rule. The schools social network is also a buzz "Hey there is a sub in so and so's class" " Oh yeah he's cool!" or "Aww I hate that guy, I'm going to ditch." In the end I leave a pretty detailed note of how the day went and let the teacher really deal with anyone who was disrespectful or went against the rules of the class.

I don't get these kind of experiences being a roving sub, I literally show up, sit with the kids, or conduct whichever activity they were in the middle of, and 30 to 59 minutes later I'm out of there. In some respects it's like a band aid *poof* it's gone. On the other hand I need to work hard to find the flow to my day as a rover, which truly helps me set the teachings of my Sensei into perspective, "Your movements must be fluid, ever changing, both pulling and pushing, like the Yin Yang"

Would I do it again? Heck yes, I have definitely been in worse situations, block classes and alternative schools to name a few, I think the biggest downfall I see to roving is that I really am trying to progress in my career, and this feels more like I am filling space rather than "Teaching." You could literally stick anyone in that classroom for those 30 minutes, with the obvious exceptions, Herbert the Pervert, or a serial killer, and the students would be fine.

I was wiped out from the holidays, and not looking forward to dealing with more rude kids after retail hell, but subbing for a friend and roving this week has brought back the gluten in me, it has instilled some confidence in me, "Hey I'm still capable of handling myself in a classroom," and I think I'm ready for more abuse. This is of course once more jobs become available, the beginning of the quarter is usually very light, but you can see the semester wear down the teachers, and progressively more jobs are available midway through the semester.
Substitute teaching is an experience

Music Maestro?

School Site: BMS
Subject: Band

I never learned how to play an instrument, my dad had a guitar that we always took out around Xmas time, strummed an incoherent song, and then promptly put away. That was the extent of my musical exposure until I was in high school, where a friend of the family gave me all of 4 lessons on how to read music. The point I'm trying to make is, with the exception of my voice and an innate sense of rhythm I really do not have a lot of experience in band, at all so, of course I was excited to sub for this class.

I get in, grab my key, and head to the band room. I check out the lesson plan "P 1-5 make sure they play the whole time"…  ok. Before school even starts there are a number of students who wanted to practice, cool! be my guest. Thus far it seems like people want to be in this class, unfortunately my experience has told me to not let my guard down until the end of the day.

In the lesson plan it mentioned that each class had a conductor, if I did not know how to. While I have no experience in conducting, I would imagine it is not hard, what I did not know, however, was the songs they were working on, so I let the student conductor take over, they were excited to do so,  i mean how often do you get to take control of your peers as an adolescent?

Period 1: Advanced band

Mostly 8th grades, a talented bunch, they had the most music to work on, there were instrument I usually only see in band, I mean how often do you see a Bassoon solo? They got through their set list quickly and then it was like, "Now what do we do Mr. C….?" Umm… So, they went over some other random songs and then back over the concert set list, let me tell you I head mary had a little lamb so many times today.

Period 2: Intermediate band

This group was a little more apprehensive about playing, but they were actually really good, their conductor did great, they too sped through the set list and so she started having people do solos, and sectioned off portions of the various songs, "Now just the clarinets…Now the flutes and trumpets, etc." This was a great solution to filling in time, I'm glad she was able to keep the class on track.

Period 3: Beginning Woodwind

This, I hate to say, was probably the least experienced group of the day. I don't really have a lot of room to talk because I'm sure if I tried to play one of these instruments I would sound pretty horrible, but with nothing to really do this was probably the most painful class to sit through. I commend their effort, but this is definitely why they are in class, to practice practice practice. This period's conductor was wonderful, she had them go through the set list, and then various other songs, basically she just kept them engaged the whole time, and this is really the key with Middle school kids. This group needed practice, but they were a good group of kids.

Period 4: Beginning Brass

When I read the previous sub's assessment of this class I was worried, "Rude and disrespectful," Uh oh. So I laid down the fear of god, i.e. The AP, and they were actually really good with me. No one really knew how to conduct in this class, which I'm sure was part of the behavioral problem the day before. We made it through though, and I can't help but think, how does this band director place his students? This class was saturated with Trumpets with some trombones, tubas, and french horns, but there was also a flute and a clarinet. Their sound was completely washed out of course, but I imagine this was the only time band fit into their schedule.

The band director does his best to be very inclusive, anyone who wants to join band, can, no questions asked. So this leads to two things, 1)Some of his classes have 44 students, holy crap!. 2) He teaches in the afternoon at the elementary school… I read this in the description, after I accepted it, but I went along with it.

Elementary School:
My rule is "If I can't see them, I can't teach them" but, rules are meant to be broken so I ventured forth "Where no Gabe had gone before," well, as a teacher at least. I was greeted by a shoddy classroom, which is mostly used for storage, the door sticks and P.E. equipment, random toys and creepy dolls are everywhere… ok. My first class came in, a group of 3 boys and 3 girls, their behavior was, ok, I had to kind of lay down the stink eye on one kid, but he straightened up pretty quickly. Did I mention there was no student conductor? So, I put on my white whig, long coat tails and did my conducting debut. I figured I was just keeping things congruent, such as the start, and keeping time for the group. I think I did ok, it didn't seem like anyone was really paying attention to me.

My last period was with this really mousy girl, she was very sweet, and quiet.

"Hi there, so, you just want to practice the set list for the concert?"
"yes"
"Mary had a little lamb here we go"
"You wanna do clockwork next?"
"yes"
"Alrighty, should we start at measure 39?
"no, 44"


It was cute, and it made a great end to a fun day. I'm not sure that I want to go full force with this and do a full class day at the elementary school, this was definitely enough exposure for me, but it made me less apprehensive should I happen to have a split assignment again.

Band was great, I wish I could have followed along a little better, or have been more help, but it was ok the kids were good, and for the most part excited to be there. Band is one of those electives where the students actually want to be there, so the day is usually pretty good. Some electives, like "record keeping" the students are shoved there, but that is a story for another post.

Theatre, as I like it?

School Site: BHS
Subject: Theatre(stagecraft)

I usually take art classes when they are presented, they are usually pretty chill. Thus far I have subbed at a continuation school, which was just listening to students talk about drugs they had done, oh and there was a "personified letters" assignment too. I also subbed at a middle school where we we did a line art assignment, one period was pretty bad, but other than that it was a relaxed day. Then there was today, which was mostly stagecraft with a couple of acting classes mixed in.

I got there on time, which is actually late, so I'm rushing around to get to class, but I have no key, this school site is weird like that.  " oh we'll just send security over to open it up for you… and they never show up. It is a mission to get to the bathroom, and back. Luckily someone just happens to come out so I took the students in .

When the job is presented it is only under a category "Art/Ceramics," so I didn't really know what I was in for. When I saw the schedule I thought "Cool! Theatre!" While this is very cool, I did not take theatre in high school, so I was not privy  to the insanity, I was in speech and debate, but it was not nearly as cool, and I did not progress like I would have liked to. I got a taste of the theatre life in community college, but we were past this high school drama, and on to more centralized theatre drama. So when I got into this class I was expecting some insanity, but I was hoping for more "theatre geeks."

Periods 1&3 - Acting I

This class was loud and energetic, I was expecting this because, hey, they're actors, but they would work on their script for a little bit, gossip a lot of bit, and then maybe do another half assed read through, kind of disappointing, but I mean I wasn't their director so they really didn't have the motivation to go full out.

I have known for a long time that theatre people are one director dogs, we just get so attached to our directors, when they are good, and breaking that routine kind of throws off our whole mojo. Each day I was in this class there was always a student who walked in and was like "How is my favorite direc… oh he's not here today?=(." Sorry to disappoint, I'll make sure to wear a red wig and lose some weight so you wont feel so let down next time.

Periods 2,5&6- Intro to stage craft.

Being at Valley theatre we did a little bit of everything. The Scenic artist/carpenter/everything stagecraft, we just called him Jerry, didn't really have a crew, so we, the actors, always pitched in splitting wood, putting together sets, painting, building scaffolding, positioning lights, good times.

So I have some experience in this, but not to the extent these students are getting. They are starting with full make up and multi position costume design sheets, moving on to defining different aspects of the stage, interior sets, exterior sets, props, etc. My stagecraft experience was not formal, so this was fascinating to me, unfortunately this was not the case for most of his students.

Period 2 is made up of advanced and beginning students. The assignment was to have the students take notes on the descriptions I was giving them, and have them make a full make up and costume sheet off of it. Cool! I had a good time reading off the descriptions, even though my voice was waning. The students were less than enthused about the assignment, and the advanced students just talked, cuddled, and basically did everything they could to not pay attention, these are the one directors dogs I was talking about. It's unfortunate they didn't do the assignment that -their- director gave them, but I get that they are missing a crucial part of their day so, what could I do?

As apathetic as Period 2 seemed the last two periods out did them by far. They had a slightly different assignment, which was due at the end of the period. I received a whopping 3 papers from period 5 and about 5 from period 6, woo.

The day was good, I had double lunch, which is always a welcomed relief, but I was just hoping for more enthusiastic theatre students. "Intro to…" is a way to get "introduced" to things like theatre, so I suppose my aspirations were a little misguided.

Day 2

This was a late start day, so the day was short. This time I received a note from the director stating " If period 5 or 6 gets a bad note they will be taking notes the whole period for the rest of the quarter." Did periods 5 and 6 shape up? You better believe it. Well 5 did immensely better, 6 was still chatty. They just had to take notes on a video, so the assignment was cake, most of them turned in work, and I made sure to clean up before they came in so I could leave their mess for the director. This day was even better, I got to teach a little bit, and the students had the motivation to not be little jerks.

I hope I get a chance to see more of the theatre programs at these schools. This is an experience I wish I had, but I was extremely shy in high school, better late than never I suppose, who knows if I do a few more shows maybe I can teach one of these programs.  I do hope to return to the theatre someday, if only to continue what I started with a women I loved very much.
R.I.P Denise, from your one director dog. <3