Personal experience
This has happened twice, and I didn’t like it the first time either
This has happened twice, and I didn’t like it the first time either.
Several years ago, toward the end of a lunch period, there was a threat called into the school that resulted in the entire 1500 student/staff population’s immediate exit from the building. We were instructed to go to the football stadium. It was a bright, sunny day and we sat in the stadium until dismissal, about two hours later.
It was a mess as parents started coming to pick up students, but all the computer equipment with identification and information on students/parents was in the vacated building. A lot was learned for future.
I’m bald. I have a collection of hats I used for outside rehearsals. I didn’t have a hat for this event and my head burned moderately significantly. It went from embarrassingly red to sore and finally to flaking. I wasn’t happy about any of it. I posted on my personal social media site, something like this:
When they find out who did this, I hope they affix that person to the flag pole in the front yard and give us all an opportunity to walk by and expressure our displeasure.
The next day I was called to an admin office where I was mildly scolded with,
We all feel like what you said — but you can’t say that.
He was right. I deleted my post and that was the end of it…..except for wondering who saw fit to copy my post and take it to the office. Was it a teacher? I don’t know for sure, but I wasn’t happy about who it was, and glad I never found out.
Then, this week…
…I get a letter from the City
“It was recently brought to the department’s attention that you upgraded your electrical panelboard without first obtaining an electrical permit.”
When we hired a contractor to install a new HVAC system, he reported that he had trouble getting our 1950’s vintage “pushmatic” breaker box to engage and recommended we consider replacing it. I brushed it off as an “upsell”, but two days later, our neighbor’s house was completely totalled (on the inside) when their breaker box malfunctioned.
I immediately contacted my HVAC contractor to ask him to go ahead and replace my breaker box. He sent an electrician. I was happy with the results and posted them.
I want to do the right thing. I worked with my contractor, the city, the city’s inspector and another contractor to make everything legal, correct and safe with the City.
My frustration….
…is with people who need to “turn me in” instead of communicating with me directly.
Rant over.
This has happened twice, and I didn’t like it the first time either Read More »
Throw Back Thursday
This is David’s entrance from his hs production of The Wiz. Once he gets fully lubricated, he adds choreography (his own) to the song. Video is under 4 minutes. Enjoy.
Throw Back Thursday Read More »
Is it ever ok for a teacher to LOVE students?
There is more to school life than what happens during the academic day. Some academic teachers are also coaches or extracurricular sponsors. Coaches develop strong bonds with their athletes. Music and theater arts teachers spend considerable extracurricular time with students – evenings, weekends, summers. These teacher/student relationships are significant and life long impacting.
Is it ever ok for a teacher to LOVE students?
In a reunion with some of the students from my first teaching job, as they were sharing memories, one person put it this way:
“Come back to teach the students of the students you taught.”
I expected to hear some of the heart-warming stories and did, but one comment caught me off guard a little. As one was listing attributes he appreciated, he included…..
“…and your smile.”
What teachers do you remember most 10-20-30 years out, and for what do you remember them?
Band is the ultimate team.
Unlike a basketball team with its starting five, there is no bench in band. Everybody is in. Everybody is a starter. Few other types of groups will involve people from such varied backgrounds. There are children of doctors and lawyers performing with children of single-parents working multiple jobs or utilizing government help. There are the students who have their own cars and those who need rides, those with the iPhones and the free phones or no phone. You will find students in most bands from every church in the community and others who have never been inside a church.
High school provides a memorable time for teens and parents to be on the same team before graduation and the empty nest.
If only it were like that for all teens.
At this most critical time in their decision-making years, if teens can’t find love, acceptance, encouragement and support from parents, teachers and mentors, they will search for it elsewhere, often with disastrous results leaving them with consequences that change lives and crush dreams.
But even more than TEAM, band is FAMILY…
Most high school athletic teams are together for a “season” — maybe six weeks with a few more for preparation. Band meets in the summer, including band camp which can be 8+hours a day. Then there is every day at school with additional rehearsals in the evenings, plus the Friday football/basketball game and the Saturday competition.
…and more functional than some.
As I stood outside Door 34, she jumped out of the passenger side of the car and ran past me, teary-eyed, crying,
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
As she went by I saw the papa, for the first time, approaching me and angrily waving a piece of paper.
“How much of this schedule is mandatory?”
I paused, if only for a moment as I thought through his reaction to my answer…
“All of it.”
After grumbling something that I probably couldn’t repeat, he returned to the car and didn’t quite lay rubber in his exit. The daughter was waiting in my office, still crying and apologetic. I hugged her. How does such a sweet daughter have a parent like that?
There are loving parents who are working 2-3 jobs each, going to school and dealing with the challenges of large families – and it is somewhere between difficult and impossible for them to spend a lot of time at football games, parades and competitions. I get that. But what do you say to this parent?
“We need to pull [Benjamin] out of band because he won’t clean his room and he needs to learn respect. He loves band and so this is the only valuable thing we can take away to make our point.”
Or this one?
“Why should I pay money for her to spend time spinning a flag. There are no colleges that will offer scholarships and besides, what job is that going to prepare her for?”
Or to these students?
“Can you please give me something to do. I’ll straighten the library….anything….just don’t make me go home.”
“I have a job so I can earn the money for my band fee, and I keep hiding it, but my mother keeps finding it and taking it.”
“I have to quit music lessons. My dad found out I was using some of my job money for music lessons and says that if I am going to waste my money on that – I can start paying rent.”
“Please don’t try to introduce yourself to my dad. Please don’t. Please, please, please don’t. He is not a nice man.”
I want to share the LOVE they may be missing.
Educationally, the L-word is dangerous. Administrations encourage admiration and respect, but love is conspicuously absent. Understandable. Inappropriate teacher student relationships make national news and destroy lives. Elementary teachers can hug students, but by middle school it is to be a touchless relationship. I disagree.
Sometimes an appropriate touch, handshake, high five, tap on the shoulder or even a hug – can be powerfully effective in mentoring, consoling or encouraging. It doesn’t have to be physical. It can be listening and responding when others won’t.
C.S. Lewis in his book, The Four Loves, divides the Greek vocabulary for “love” into four categories: Storge (στοργή storgē) -affection, Philia (Philia (φιλία philía) – friendship, Éros (ἔρως érōs) – romantic love, and Agápe (ἀγάπη agápē) – charity.
None of those match completely what I’m trying to define. Storge (affection) can include the physical. Philia (i.e. Philadelphia – brotherly love) comes close but can include the sexual. Éros is obviously not appropriate, and Agápe, often interpreted as the love between Christians is also close, but gets into spiritual and that is not quite it either.
I “L” my students with a parental type. I see their potential and their youthful enthusiasm and I love that. I love their willingness to share with me things that they can’t comfortably share anywhere else.
“You are always the one to trust with issues like this because you treat us like people and not just another bunch of “teenagers”.”
I ADMIRE students who…
- pay band fees out of a paycheck
- pay for private instruction lessons out-of-pocket
- seem completely self-supporting (clothes, obligations)
- apologize for the way their parent(s) behaved
- juggle the extra rehearsals and activities with job and homework — and go for the best grades without parental encouragement or expectation
- keep a positive attitude when others have parents involved and but they don’t
Nobody said life is fair. Those who endure hardships can be the better for it later. Trust me on that. As the oldest of five children raised in a single parent family by a polio surviving mother (and if you have no idea what that means, thank God), I understand poverty, but also how to work through it, with it, around it, and above it …. so cut me some slack when I don’t expect less from the less fortunate.
Students often impress me with friend choices and for the way they support and encourage each other. It is moving to see how friends and band members surround one who is hurting, physically or emotionally. With proper relationships established, teachers can be included in, or involved separately in similar support and encouragement – even of some personal issues.
I RESPECT students …
- who work through moderate pain or discomfort without complaint
- who have the musical ability to thrive, but can’t get the new instrument, or the private lessons, or go to the summer camps….or even stay in band, because of a parent who doesn’t see the value of band or color guard
- expect more of themselves than their parents do
- endure custody battles and try not to allow it to interfere with band
I hope these students appreciate how hard I try to make their situations work out.
And we have students whose parents are their biggest cheerleaders and amazing supporters…..
- helping them earn the highest of Boy or Girl Scout honors
- supporting their garage band
- encouraging out of country mission trips
- inspiring them to pursue the same vocation as the parent
- or spending countless hours volunteering for band (committees, sewing, cooking, feeding, chaperoning, driving, etc)
We have CARING students who….
- stand outside Wal-mart when it is below freezing to ring bells and play Salvation Army brass ensemble music
- volunteer in nursing homes and with church youth groups in a host of different types of volunteerism
- help raise money for those sick and injured
I am a retired high school teacher who appropriately loves, admires, and respects students.
Is it ever ok for a teacher to LOVE students? Read More »
My College Years with an Old Opera Singer
By John Gardner
This house and owner involved three years of my college life living in a home owned by a 1920’s New York opera singer.
Not quite haunted, my college apartment was a hospital room during the Civil War. This was my college home for three years while attending the University of Kentucky. Only a two-minute walk from the music building made it convenient and the rent was cheap but came with a price. Miss Iva Dagley, a 70-yr old former opera singer, rented five third floor rooms to college guys. Both the house and the homeowner were historic and unique. The straight parallel rows of huge trees that go out for several blocks from the house likely outlined the original entrance to the 1800’s estate. Miss Dagley (no one called her Iva) was a rising opera singer when the 1930’s Great Depression sent her home from the New York’s Metropolitan Opera. She never talked about her life overseas or in New York, or how she acquired her wealth, but aside from the value (historic and monetary) of the house itself, the contents were priceless. I’m not surprised that she never married.
Life at the Dagley house included an education UK could not match. She adjusted forever my dialect, diction, grammar and vocabulary. I uncomfortably experienced how the élite deal with the ordinary, picked up breadcrumbs of how the rich keep, manage and spend money and cringed at her political prejudice and unapologetic racism.
Miss Dagley was legally blind and her cat was deaf…. which made for a hilarious combination. She couldn’t see the cat and it couldn’t hear her coming. From the 3rd floor, we would periodically hear the cat scream, often followed by a crashing pot or pan. When I ran down to check on her after one especially noisy event, she scolded me to never do that again.
Rent was cheap but included one “errand” per month. Since there were five of us, that meant she could get out at least that often, or to get things done in or around the house. Sometimes our errand was to give a tour of the house to her guests. In my three years there I did a lot with and for Miss Dagley. I’ve highlighted a few of the more memorable.
“1791” Tapestry in a stairwell. When showing some guests a thick tapestry…and noticing “1791” stitched into the lower right corner, I later asked her if it was a copy. Her blunt response,
“Young man, please don’t ever again suggest that I have a ‘copy’ of anything in this house.”
Traveling with Miss Dagley was a trip. We drove her in a 20-year-old Cadillac. Faded pink, it must have been especially rare and attention-grabbing in the 50’s. It was in mint condition as it was only outside the garage a few miles per month. Picture, as you read the following ordeals, how the other person involved would give her assistant a “is she for real?” look that they knew she could not see.
The bank. “She wanted to “cash” a check. She didn’t specify why….just handed me a money bag and an envelope for the teller. Imagine…. a college student approaching a bank teller with a nearly blind senior citizen woman, and handing the teller an envelope containing a check, a note to “cash it” with specific instructions of how many of each denomination – and a money bag. I was unaware of the amount of the check until the teller summoned security, which quickly, but politely, positioned around us. Can you say awkward moment? The exchange with the teller went something like this:
Teller: “Ma’am, are you sure you want to cash this….all of this?”
Dagley: “What does the note say?”
Teller: “Yes ma’am, but are you aware of the amount you are asking for?”
Dagley: “You mean the amount for which I am asking? (She was always correcting grammar and pronunciation). Is there confusion about the amount?”
I was not surprised that they were questioning her writing, especially if she wrote it out herself. More probable is that her attorney, a frequent visitor, wrote the check, and that her signature was all over it. When signing things, she would ask us to place the pen in the general area. Her signature was huge and never went in the intended direction.
Teller: Are you sure you have the right number of zeros?
Dagley: How many zeros do you see?
Teller: Ma’am that is ten thousand dollars.
Dagley: “Yes, it is. It is in my account and I want you to put it in this bag.”
Bank officer w/Security: “Miss Dagley, may we have a word with you?”
Dagley: “No. You may not. This is a simple transaction and I want you to complete it NOW.”
I never knew what she did with that $10,000 in cash.
The fireplace store.“She wanted an insert for one of her massive fireplaces (note the chimneys on the house). She was using her long-sleeved white gloves to feel shapes and textures. The biggest difference between her white glove inspection and that of a Marine sergeant was she was unarmed.
Me: “Miss Dagley, those stoves are dirty.” (Ignores me.)
Salesman: “Ma’am, you are getting your white gloves dirty.”
Dagley: “Why am I getting my white gloves dirty?”
Salesman: “These are sample stoves in active fireplaces and they have soot on them.”
Dagley: “Why are you displaying dirty stoves? Show me a clean one, please.”
At the gas station. (full service, of course.)
Dagley: “What are you putting on my windshield?”
Attendant: “Window cleaner, ma’am.”
Dagley: “Soap and water. That is all I want you putting on my car.”
Sending Christmas Cards. She kept a book and tracked incoming and outgoing cards.
Me: “Here’s a card from [whoever]. Shall I address one to them?”
Dagley: “Did they send me a card last year?”
Me: “Yes ma’am.”
Dagley: “What about two years ago?”
Me: “Doesn’t look like it.”
Dagley: “Then we shall wait until next year. Next?”
Some of the rooms in her house.
Hopefully, someday I will find the pictures I took.
The SILVER Room.“Probably originally a dining room, this room had a remarkable collection of only silver artifacts. It was a large room with layers of added shelves. Badly tarnished silver (I’m confident it wouldn’t have been if she could have seen it, but it was not wise to criticize anything in the house. My mother commented,
It would take a full-time person just to keep this room shiny.
The TEAKWOOD Room. Every piece of furniture was hand-carved under water. The room had a very oriental look to it, with marble serpent eyes in the arms of some of the chairs.
The centerpiece of the SUN room was a massive marble table. The tabletop was no fewer than three inches thick and, according to Miss Dagley, took seven men to carry in. Nothing sat on it. No one ever used it. It was just…..there.
The Living Room, and all the rooms on the first floor had approximately 20 ft ceilings and hardwood floors covered with ornamental not quite wall to wall rugs. The rug in the living room had to be 60-80 ft long and over 20 ft wide. I would never be able to afford even the frames that surrounded the massive paintings and portraits. She was stunning in her twenties during the twenties. The 4-foot urns looked like she picked them up in India. At the back of the room (went from front to back of the house) was a full-size grand piano (not a baby grand). On very rare occasions, when she thought we were all out of the house, she would vocalize. Given her age, I can only imagine the power and beauty of such a voice 50 years earlier. She gave a very small number of private voice lessons. I wish I could have sat in on some of those.
The Second Floor had four large, ornate bedrooms, each opening to a common foyer that provided several chairs and couches that I never saw used. Sometimes she would have an extended-staying guest in one of the other 2nd floor rooms.
The Third Floor had five rooms. Four rooms had windows that faced the side or the back, and those had normal, although old widows in them. The room that faced the front had only one small ornamental original window that couldn’t be changed because of the historical registry. There was an electric bell installed that Miss Dagley would use if she needed to “call” one of us, or if she needed to give us notice that she was “coming up”.
Diction and Dialect
Singers must carefully and correctly pronounce their words. So did people in Miss Dagley’s presence. I once asked if she wanted me to wash (pronounced worsch) the car. She kept asking me what I wanted to do to her car until I figured out her point. Another time, I mentioned something on the “nooze“. She asked me how to spell that and when I responded n-e-w-s, she encouraged me to pronounce what I spelled. During my three years in her house, she thoroughly negated my northern Kentucky accent.
Racism and Communism
There was an African-American man who took care of her yard. His transactions with her were always from the back door (which I saw only one time when I walked around the outside of the house), never the front. One time I called her on a reference to him and she silenced me with,
I have nothing against colored people…..they’re just not as smart as normal people.
Another shocker was when I had said something about how I liked the way John Kennedy spoke:
Democrats are communists and he was one of the worst.
Curfew, Girls and the Girl Apartment
We all had a key to her massive front door. But each night, once she believed we were all inside, she would apply the additional locks. I don’t recall a time-specific curfew, but we all knew she waited for us to get in before she would go to bed, which made midnight practicing at the music building problematic. She told us that we were to call her if we ever got to the house and found the door locked. No one wanted to make that call.
One night I missed the locking, which meant having to walk to campus to find a pre-cellular-phone. Instead, I elected to use the fire escape, which required the first ladder to get to the metal roof right outside her bedroom window and then climbing the second ladder to the window of my room. Unfortunately, I mistakenly thought I had the storm window locked open and when it slammed shut, the shattered glass made a terrible noise outside her window. I looked over the fire escape and saw her bedroom light come on. I climbed inside just in time to hear the bell ring and her call, “I’m coming up”. She never raised her voice, simply asking….
Why did you break my window?
Joan and I were dating by the time I moved into the house sophomore year. Miss Dagley liked Joan, especially since she was a vocal music major. Two of the five third floor guys would have girlfriends over. The other three didn’t want to put their friends through Miss Dagley’s unofficial approval process, which generally required only the first few conversation exchanges. Only the best for her boys, of course.
There was a studio apartment out the back of the house that was probably originally a summer kitchen or servant quarters. She would rent it to girls, but not to just one. She offered it to Joan, but when the second renter fell through, Miss Dagley helped her get a basement apartment down the street that provided extra income to a nice elderly couple. I spent more time in that basement than Joan spent in my attic.
Church and misc
Miss Dagley was Episcopalian. I never saw her church, although I would have loved to hear her sing. I learned two fun facts about this church. There were only six members (left). And because of her Packard story, I believe it was of a rural country variety. The reason she bought her Cadillac was because her previous car, a Packard, was so heavy that it once “sank” in her church parking lot.
I regret….
… that I never returned to visit. I learned of Miss Iva Dagley’s death from the lawyer’s response to my Christmas card. She had no family alive and the gossip, while we were there, was that it would all be left to her cat.
My College Years with an Old Opera Singer Read More »
May I Grovel For Your Services?
By John Gardner
I had five music students studying individually with me at the small, liberal arts university. I had a signed adjunct faculty contract for the upcoming year.
The person who asked me to sign the contract called and asked me to come in. It sounded serious.
“We need you to voluntarily let us cancel your contract. You will not have any students this year.”
They had negotiated with a “Performance Major” student to come, but part of that negotiation included that the student would study with the principal on that instrument from the local professional orchestra.
But, when they went to the instrumental instructor, the instructor refused to make the trip for one student. He wanted all of them. To get all of them, the music department needed me to give up my contract. It was a signed agreement, so I needed to do so on my own. Of course, there were apologies.
I did.
In a relatively short amount of time, the performance major changed majors and sold her instruments. Another changed majors and dropped instrumental lessons. And a third was threatening to do so.
And then…..
…..they were back to a number the instructor was not willing to work with.
I got a call from the Department Chair asking me to come in. Mad, hurt, disappointed and convinced I’d never work with the university again, I went.
After knocking and entering, he got out of his chair, down on his knees with hands in praying position — and crawing on his knees toward me as he asked,
“May I grovel for your services?”
At the first private lesson with a student who studied with me prior to the contract cancellation, I noticed several tick marks next to several of the exercises in the book she was working from. When I asked what those were all about,
“He would tell me to play each of these ten times each and then come to the practice room where he had gone to practice.”
I was furious — not with the student. That instructor was banned from the campus.
May I Grovel For Your Services? Read More »
Names students would call me to my face
DAD
My first teaching year, fresh out of college, I was only four years older than the seniors in the band. At Camp Crescendo, it was the band director’s responsibility to ensure students were all in the dorms for lights out. There was one particular senior girl, Sherrie P., who started calling me “dad” — and it stuck…at least, during camp. Every evening as I walked around the dorm area to ensure my “children” were all where they were supposed to be, I would hear variations of “Good night dad”…. And “Thanks for checking on us dad.”
I was worried about getting back to school for my first semester on the job and having students calling me “dad” in the hallway.
Fortunately, that didn’t happen.
“G” …
…has been the most common and the most persistent.
“GARDNER”
I rarely felt like students were being disrespectful, or I would never have allowed that. The very few times that I questioned, I told them my first name is “Mister”.
GPA
Toward the end, instead of being 4yrs older than the seniors, I am 4x their age, older than their parents and maybe even some of their grandparents.
Other Misc
“GEESTER”
“G-DOG”
“MR. G”
Names students would call me to my face Read More »
Teen girls were my weakness
Ok. Ok. It is NOT what you’re thinking. C’mon, you know me better than that.
My problem was that I was having trouble hearing conversations, especially at school, which can be problematic. This intensified after a severe ear infection that never completely healed. My ears felt stopped up similar to what can happen when descending from a high altitude in a plane. There was a graduation ceremony, mid-infection, where I could not hear anyone. The other band director realized something was going on. Fortunately, school was out.
When a student, more often a girl, would come to me in a rehearsal, we would have to move into the office so I could hear without all the band noise.
One student explained it to another this way…..
He might ask you to repeat things a lot, and he doesn’t always get it right…..but you can be in another room and miss a note and he is on you immediately.
Voices were a problem. Wrong notes were not.
I was fitted for and received a moderately high-level pair of hearing aids.
They were supposed to be able to pull the voices out of the background noise, but that didn’t really work in a rehearsal setting. The band volume would often be painful. In church, I could hear the pastor better, but the congregational singing became too loud — so I stopped wearing them.
Fast forward two years past retirement, it was a large, noisy hotel meeting room with hundreds of people at tables of ten having conversations, which was the catalyst for unpacking the hearing aids and giving them another shot. There were several college friends at my table and I really wasn’t hearing any of them.
I got them out and tried to put them in….but something has died and the out-of-warranty repair cost would be several hundred dollars.
But there is good news.
Now that I am retired, part of my insurance covers an audiology exam AND a healthy allowance toward new hearing aids.
Stay tuned for updates.
Teen girls were my weakness Read More »
“Tell My Father”
Son David sang this solo in several show choir solo competitions his senior year in high school (2001). It is an emotional solo from the musical “Civil War” about a son asking someone to “Tell My Father” about his death on the battlefield.
To increase the impact, David borrowed a reenactor Civil War uniform. He wouldn’t let me hear the song until he performed it. I remember the first time I saw him walk toward the competition room, in “full uniform”….he walked, pridefully, in total character and ignoring stares from other students in the hallways. Dressing in ‘costume’ was not a common thing for solos.
And the first time he walked on stage, he confidently and effectively commanded audience reverence and respect. Each time he finished, it felt like there was an ever so slight gap, prior to applause, where the audience was wiping tears and unsure if applause was appropriate, especially after the final line.
After one of his performances, I heard a couple girls from another school talking in the hallway:
“I just heard this guy dressed in a Civil War uniform sing a song to his father and it made me cry.”
It made me, David’s father, cry every time.
Here are the lyrics:
Tell my father that his son
Didn’t run or surrender
That I bore his name with pride
As I tried to remember
You are judged by what you do
While passing through
As I rest ‘neath fields of green
Let him lean on your shoulder
Tell him how I spent my youth
So the truth could grow older
Tell my father, when you can
I was a man
Tell him we will meet again
Where the angels learn to fly
Tell him we will meet as men
For with honour did I die
Tell him I wore the blue
Proud and true, through the fire
Tell my father so he’ll know
I love him so
Tell him how I wore the blue
Just the way that he taught me
Tell my father not to cry
Then say goodbye
I complimented her smile and ran into wokeness
I complimented her smile and ran into wokeness Read More »