For the past 6 years, I've taught singing, dancing and acting classes at the Hale Center Theatre in West Valley. Classes are divided into 3 groups:6-9 year olds
10-11 year olds
and
12-16 year olds
Now I consider myself to be a really good high school teacher- but after dealing with all of these different age groups from 9:00am-4:00pm- I am completely worn out.
In high school, I can always threaten uncooperative students with their grade- here, I can only threaten them by taking away their art time (and, since I'm kind of in charge of art, I use the term "art" very loosely- although I think I can publish a book on 1001 things to do with a Styrofoam plate).
In high school, students rarely have temper tantrums in class- here, during the June session I had a 6-year old girl that kept running out of the classroom whenever she didn't want to do anything. Finally I grabbed her on the way out and made her sit on my knee. She proceeded TO BITE MY ELBOW and call me RUDE. She later drew me an apology picture (where I appeared to have no arms).
In high school, I don't know or care when students use the bathroom- here, I had a 10-year old proceed to tell me he was late to production class because he "was taking a big #2".
High school students cry, but- here, we've had crying over:
a chair being moved
someone was being touched
we ran out of red paint
their top hat didn't fit
someone stepped on their hand
being asked to sit down
The best part of the day is Production Class- this is where each age group learns (singing and dancing) three different songs from different musicals that are linked by a common theme. One of the other teachers writes an original script where everyone gets 3 lines (they have to memorize them) and they make their own props. The best moment in June was when the oldest class was learning Seize the Day from Newsies- and we were going to have them make banners with the initials of the song- when suddenly we realized that fifteen 12-16 year olds would be holding banners saying STD. That would have been an awesome revue.
4 comments:
Wow Clin, my condolences to you and your rag-a-muffin group of grade school turds. I understand where you are coming from though, I once taught a comunity theatre class. One of my students had a mental handicap and he insisted on licking the carpeted walls and sucking on the bottoms of desk legs. Quite Awkward.
"bite my elbow and call me rude". That's too funny. At least you got an apology picture. In three more years that could be Millie!
Oh man, that STD story made my day.
Are you glad you're not an Elementary Ed teacher? It's always rewarding to a mother to hear of her child having to deal with obnoxious children--sort of a just payback, I think.
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