Last Day of School 2018

Pretty self explanatory! 

So in a crazy turn of events I became a teacher last August. (You can read more about that here)

Today was the last day of a very crazy school year (pay raises, walkouts, and a flood...oh my) and I have a few (okay a lot) of observations.

The girl on the left had NO idea if she had made the worst mistake of her life
The girl on the right knows that it was the biggest leap of faith and the best thing she's ever done

The girl of the left just left a job that she hated
The girl on the right goes to work every day and is amazed she gets paid to do what she does because she loves it so much

The girl on the left was worried that the kids would hate her
The girl on the right has to kick the children out of her room because they want to be there ALL THE TIME

The girl on the left thought she knew what happy was, and she did, but didn't realize it could carry over to her job
The girl on the right is fulfilling her life's passion and loving every second


So a lot has changed since August 17. I was really nervous that first day. I walked into my first day not really knowing anyone and terrified to face kids. The wonderful art teacher took me under her wing as I walked in the cafeteria and one of the instructional coaches never let me go a second without thinking I was completely cut out for the job.

At the same time as this I was stage managing Little Women. The first day of school we had our first blocking rehearsal. The director, a close friend and fellow introvert, spent his day teaching high school, followed by teaching a college class, and rounding out with rehearsal. At the end of the night he was dead on his feet and I was bouncing off the walls. As we were leaving he looked at me and said "how are you not tired?" I told him "this is the first time in years I have not spent my day saying 'I hate my job' over and over."

This year I'm pretty sure I learned more than the kids did! I've always heard if YOU want to become an expert at something then teach it and boy, oh boy, did I find that to be true!

At the middle school...

I watched kids who would not speak in class bloom into the kids I had to tell to be quiet over and over.

I watched kids who were terrified to speak to their peers go to contest and place.

I watched kids who had never been given a chance at a big role blossom with an individual event.

I watched kids smile and have fun and laugh and goof off.

I watched kids keep coming back for more even when I made them write notes from bell to bell for five weeks solid and gave ridiculously confusing tests (did I mention I learned a lot this year?)

I watched sixth graders grow from little kids to teenagers in nine short months.

I watched seventh graders gain more confidence and stand up for what they believed to be right.

I watched eighth graders who never thought they could do 'this' turn into the most passionate hard working kids I've ever seen.

I watched a team form and saw them band together to help and encourage each other

I watched that team take second at their first tournament and kids who had never performed in front of people take home medals

With the high school...

I watched two very brave girls get out of a comfortable suburban with their friends to get into a suburban driven by the new middle school teacher

I relearned debate and became pretty confident in judging it

I sang along (very badly) to Hamilton with debate kids on the way to tournament after tournament

I learned the value of the french and dutch braids and letting the girls braid my hair, especially on long tournament weekends with rain when a few more minutes of sleep is WAY more valuable than curling one's hair

I watched a group of kids pour their hearts into personal pieces that dealt with parents, disability, losing friends, and difficult teachers and watched them succeed week after week telling these stories

I watched kids who set the bar way too low for themselves vastly outdo themselves

I watched kids go from not knowing their piece at the beginning of the week to qualifying for regionals on the weekend.

I laughed (a lot) in suburbans and on buses and in hotels and in cafeterias

I sat on pins and needles waiting for results of rounds

I hurt with them when they didn't do as well as they wanted

I screamed and rejoiced when they won

I laughed at a million inside jokes over and over again

I walked millions of steps all over the place including a trip to a museum, looking for statues, shopping, and boba tea

I cried with them at surprises and watched them do amazing things outside of the team

I tried my hardest to be there for them when they just needed to know an adult genuinely cared

I came to love these kids with all of my heart at both schools. I cannot imagine not having my 8th graders next year every day and don't get me started on how much I will miss the seniors.

But the thing I saw more than anything in the last nine months was myself grow into who I was always been meant to be.

I thank every middle school student, the obedient and the challenging, who was with me day in and day out and put up with me learning along with them.

I thank every high school student who welcomed me into their drama and debate family and made me feel loved and appreciated with every hug, I love you, and invitation to watch them perform.

I thank the parents for letting me teach and love their kids day in and day out and for believing in our school district.

I thank the high school coaches for listening when a little voice said my name and taking a chance on me.

I thank the administration for taking a chance even when I seemed like a far fetched idea.

And most of all I thank God for speeding up my five year plan into a two month plan.

I grew up with amazing teachers that cared about ME, both inside the classroom and outside. The kind of teachers that you could go to when you were having a bad day and they would listen to what was going on or would just let you hide out when you needed to. Classrooms that became more of a home than anything else. When I took this position I wanted to be that teacher. I felt that I owed it to the universe to pay that forward. I wanted to be the solace in the bad days and the cheerleader in the good. I honestly thought it would take a few years to establish that, but somehow it didn't. Loving these kids, even when they are less than lovable, has become one of my greatest joys. And getting to do that while teaching them about what I love the most is just, well, perfection.

Every compromise (less travel, less shows, less sleep) has been worth it. This has been the best year of my life and I cannot wait for next year. Only 87 days until year 2 starts!

PS
While on break I'm going to try to update this thing and write about the shows from the past two and a half years! I did update the lists if you've been wondering what all I've seen!

I'm a Teacher?

Our first tournament

I haven't written in fifteen months and man a lot has changed...



Two years ago I stage managed Mary Poppins...one of the tag lines for the musical is 'anything can happen if you let it'. This year I found that to be overwhelmingly true!

Last May (I think, maybe June) I had dinner with my friend Lindsey and made the comment that it seemed that every year in May since college I could look back and see that my life had COMPLETELY changed. College graduate to terrible breakup to happy relationship to new house to engagement to broken engagement to first semester of grad school to full time grad school to Masters graduate to tornado to death/charter/pastor moving to flood to NYC trips to new job (2004-2017 in a nutshell). However you look at it May always seemed to be when I could see the most drastic changes in my life. Clearly I said this hoping that within a year I'd somehow be married and be thinking babies (she's a labor and delivery nurse ;)). Well, that's not what happened, though somehow in a year I did manage to have some kids...

...in the form of students!

Today was the last day of school (with students...I still have four more days of work) of my first year teaching!

You may be asking yourself: how on EARTH did you get here?

Well the very long story very short is that sometimes we tell God our plans, which are lined out in a totally reasonable timeframe, He hears them and says 'yup, cool, you're on the right track, but let's fast track it!'

Last summer I was hanging out with a bunch of teachers, going to NYC every other month (or less) seeing ALL the shows, and HATING my job...like A LOT. I got back from my pre Tonys trip to NYC and heard a DISTINCT voice say 'you can't keep doing this.' Well I took that as going to NYC all the time. I knew I'd had a GREAT run getting to see all the shows nominated for Best Musical last year and more from an amazing season, but it just wasn't practical.

So I go back to work and get sent on a wild goose chase to a site I'd never been to with a system I didn't know to do a job that was impossible in a building I couldn't find the door to which I had to drive sixteen miles out of the way to get to and avoid getting hit by 18 wheelers. I was NOT a happy camper.

After I left I had an epiphany. I called my best friend and said "I want to be a teacher. Do you think this is because of the company I'm keeping or real?" She said "well I think the company you're keeping has something to do with it, but I think if you taught drama it would be right." We had joked for years about growing up to be a dynamic duo like our high school music and drama teachers, but life took us different ways.

I ended up calling the show for our Childrens' Theatre production of Aladdin, but when that was done I went and gathered transcripts and necessary paperwork and sent in my application for alternative certification. I had a five year plan and this was the beginning of it. I knew that I only wanted to work in Ardmore City Schools. I knew that there was a proposed bond vote for a new performing arts center in November. I knew that there was an amazing competitive acting program at the high school, but with the PAC they would need more help. So my plan was to spend a year getting my certification, then apply for jobs probably as a history teacher, since that's what my degree is in, then when these new drama jobs opened up I could hopefully take the speech/drama/debate test and be able to teach theatre of some kind.

Always know that when you make plans God laughs...

I knew they were planning to start a middle school drama program this year. And I knew someone had been hired. Exactly one month after I decided to embark upon this little adventure I see a post on facebook by the head drama coach at the high school asking if anyone knew of someone who might be interested in the middle school drama coach position.

I should mention that I knew the high school drama coach, not terribly well, but had become pretty fast friends with the assistant coach over the past few months. I should also mention that these coaches had just taken kids to two national tournaments and had a student win the national championship at one and place fourth at the second. And I should mention I knew that student because of community theatre and we'd talked quite a lot leading up to the second nationals and during the tournament. SHE knew I wanted to be a teacher...the coaches did not.

So the morning of this post looking for a middle school drama teacher a song from Finding Neverland got stuck in my head: If The World Turned Upside Down. Now I realize most of you (probably all of you) have never seen this musical or heard this song, but for whatever reason I was listening to a random Broadway playlist I'd made of shows from the past year and this one just got stuck. What do I do when a song gets stuck in my head? Listen to it on repeat.

Essentially Finding Neverland is about J.M. Barrie having an existential crisis, befriending a family which had four boys, quitting his stable job, and writing one of the most popular children's stories ever: Peter Pan. Seeing that my name is Wendy clearly I love Peter Pan.

So the song is stuck. The lyrics go like this:

There's a moment you've been waiting all your life for 

When you find the very reason you're alive for

And it happens when you seem to least expect it

All at once you come alive and feel connected

I ignored the beat inside my heart for too long

Had accepted what was right

But always felt wrong

It's the second hand of time I'd been a slave to

But inside there was a feeling

Something I always knew

When the world turned upside down

And the earth and sky changed around

All the whispers of the possible became clear and loud

When the world turned upside down

When my world turned upside down

If you want to listen to it click here. I related to this song on a spiritual level. It was everything I was feeling. I WANTED this job, but had ZERO reason to believe that this nationally recognized team would want me who LOVED theatre, but had no formal training in it and no formal training or experience in education.

Through the summer we'd been going to karaoke on Wednesday nights. This just happened to be a Wednesday so I showed up and most of the regulars were not there, but it was drama camp week and the whole camp staff and the coaches were there. I felt like I was crashing a party, but I went with it and just asked what had happened.

I spent the weekend trying to make myself okay with the fact that there was NO way this was going to happen because I wasn't going to get up the courage to ask about it. Then Sunday rolled around and I went to a local community high school production of Sister Act and watched the kids that I would be working with from the high school if I got the job (which I had not applied for). I tried really hard to make myself okay with this idea and told myself there would be other amazing kids, but it just didn't sit well.

Then Tuesday morning happened. I woke up to get ready for my job that I hated and had a message from the head drama coach that just said "Wanna be a drama teacher?" I said "Actually yes."

The rest, is history. Well, history that was very stressful for about a month waiting to actually make it happen. Each day that ticked by was one day closer to school starting and one day of increasing my anxiety of needing this change in my life.

I played phone tag with the superintendent for about two weeks and finally got the call that I would meet with him the Monday before school started on Thursday. I spent that Sunday gathering references. I had the best interview ever Monday morning which ended with me asking what I would be teaching. I was under the impression it would be four sections of English and two sections of drama. He countered with 'how about drama all day?' I walked out of his office thinking I probably had the job, but not 100% sure. I called to follow up the next morning and was told to come in at 2:30 by the HR director. When I arrived she placed my contract in front of me, expecting me to start the next day, which I couldn't because I still had to quit my job! I went and met my principal (who I'm certain thought this whole ordeal was a CRAZY mistake and who I knew I would have to win over) and see my classroom, which had been used as a storage room. Wednesday I called my boss' boss who was a long time friend of mine to tell him that I would be resigning. I wrote a lovely resignation letter, sent it, cleaned out my desk, did my fingerprints and had my first day of teaching along with the first day of school.

It was a HUGE leap of faith. I had no idea if the kids would like me, if I could handle a classroom, if I knew what on earth I was talking about or anything else....