School-plays Rock!

I have a background in theater. My first memory of performing is in the 3rd grade; I remember the level of excitement I felt at being on stage in front of an audience saying my line and singing with my fellow classmates. Performing onstage is one of my great passions in life that has become so unutilized since moving to Salmon 12 years ago.

 

As a music teacher for grades K-5, I like to incorporate my love of the theater into my job. So, I decided that the 2nd & 4th grades would annually produce plays as their musical show. After all, I did go to college to become an English & Theater secondary level teacher, so I feel that I can still teach part of what I learned in my education to my students, and pass on my love of theater to them. Except, this year, I don't think I projected that love to my 4th grade students...I think I passed on my crazy to them instead!

 

Back in November, the 4th grade classes started working on the play "School-house Rock". There are 3 classes this year, and they're a talented group, so I wanted to do a play that gave more students parts instead of the plays we've done in the past that have a limited number of major roles. It's a play that I've never seen or done before, and it's based off the 1970s & 80s Saturday morning cartoons with the same name, which I've also never seen before. But after reading through the play, and watching some old cartoons on You-Tube, I thought it was something that these students were capable of and that it would appeal to them, and I felt that it was a challenge that I was willing to take on full throttle.

Each class learned 6 songs for the play. Each song teaches an educational subject in a fun way that makes learning appealing. We learned "Interplanet Janet", "The Preamble", "Three is a Magic Number", "Interjections", "Lolly, Lolly, Lolly (get your adverbs here)", and "I'm Just a Bill". The songs are all very fast and use big words, so it took us almost 2 months just to learn and memorize the lyrics and sing them with the fast rhythms and melodies with quick tempos. Then I held auditions in each class for soloist and speaking and acting parts. Then all the parts were assigned, and I began teaching them stage blocking for each song, and they practiced using props.

Each song is so completely different from each other, and I incorporated a LOT of props into our play to go along with the subjects of each song. It took me a lot of extra hours creating, compiling, and completing the props & set for the show. That doesn't include all the extra hours of lost sleep from thinking about it and putting it all together in my head, either. I do some of my best thinking at night when I lay down to sleep and the house is silent, but unfortunately, once I start thinking about a subject, I find it hard to stop and I lose a lot of quality sleep from it.

Lack of sleep always causes me to become emotional, and about two weeks before the plays were scheduled to happen, I started mentally losing it. I knew that the students wouldn't be ready in time, so I scheduled 7 extra practices (2 for each class, and one extra for a class that needed it) during my prep hour time for two weeks. So in addition to not sleeping well, I was also losing valuable downtime during each day. I started to become physically and emotionally exhausted, and I began losing patience with my students. I am not proud of the fact that as a result, I became more demanding and yelled a lot at them. So the students began reacting to me and there were several that started acting out during class and rehearsal time: getting in fights, swearing in class, breaking props, being disrespectful, not following directions, etc. I threatened 5 boys that they would be kicked out of their class plays if this type of disruptive behavior continued, and I've never had to do that before. I felt awful giving such ultimatums to my students, and I was emotionally upset that it had to come to this. I blamed myself, and improved my own behavior during rehearsal time, but unfortunately, 2 of the boys did not do anything to change their behavior, and had to be removed from backstage and from play practices during music class. But after that, the classes seemed to be more productive during rehearsals.

I finally felt that things were coming together for the students during the final days before the shows. The last week of February were the performance dates. Each class performed their play once for students, and then again for their parents. So there were 6 performances total scheduled for that week: 2 from each class. I knew it would be a stressful week with so many shows taking place. To make matters worse, my husband was gone to work meetings out of town that week, and I had to find a daycare for Kanyon in the afternoons. Kanyon is not good with change, and since Josh has been taking care of him in the afternoons during the winter months, he hasn't had to go to daycare since November. I didn't want him to be mentally freaking out and throwing fits while I was already very stressed, so I knew that he needed to be with someone who he liked and trusted instead of dropping him off at an unknown daycare. I asked around prior to this happening, and nobody was able to watch him for me that week. I was growing uneasy and anxious, but I tried to remain faithful that it would work out. At last, and only 3 days before Josh left, I found a reliable, trustworthy person who said she could watch Kanyon and her son is one of Kanyon's best friends, so I felt very good about it.

On Monday the 25th, the first 4th grade class had their school performance. It was difficult to watch. It's like they had forgotten everything we'd worked on for 4 months over the weekend. They forgot their lines, their cues, their solos, their props, and they were super noisy backstage. I was completely shocked and disappointed. Knowing that there were still 5 performances to go, I was worried that if this was the beginning to a week filled with shows that were anything like the 1st one, I wouldn't be able to survive emotionally.

On Tuesday the 26th, the second 4th grade class had their school performance. This show was filled with technical errors: about an hour before the performance, the DVD player quit working (I project two of the cartoons on the back wall during parts of the show), then the microphone wouldn't produce any sound. I finally got the DVD player to work, then I called the maintenance crew and they fixed the microphone problem, and this all happened while I was teaching other music classes. After the 4th graders came and their show began, the projector quit working--so although the DVD player was now fixed, nobody in the audience could see the cartoon on the back wall. We had to cut a song during the middle of the show, and I was proud that the students kept going and continued acting, despite the technical flaws. The students finished the show, and I gave them their critique, but then I began to fall apart, and I couldn't keep the tears from flowing. I called the school's computer guy, and he came over and fixed the projector so that it would work for the afternoon parent show of the 1st 4th grade class who'd had their school performance the day before. After crying all during lunch hour, and then for another 10 minutes after he fixed it, I just prayed that the afternoon show would go okay. I went on teaching my other classes until about 3:00. I had that first 4th grade class come 1/2 hour early before the parent show, and we ran through the entire play to make sure they remembered all their cues and lines and solos that they'd forgotten during the previous days' show. And then something miraculous and magical happened: they had an absolutely perfect performance. The show went off without a hitch, and it was exactly how I'd envisioned it in my head. I couldn't believe it; they were phenomenal! I was extremely proud of my students, and I cried tears of joy after their show because I was so amazed at what they'd just done and I finally felt like there was hope for the 2nd half of the week that had started out so rough.

On Wednesday the 27th, the final 4th grade class had their student performance that morning. I felt prepared to have a terrible show, from what had happened with the previous 2 students shows. But I wasn't too distraught; after all what else could go wrong that hadn't already?! When the class came, they had students absent, so I knew that I had to be their fill-in for a solo and a speaking part. During the middle of the show, things began to fall apart. I sang the solo at the beginning of the song "Interplanet Janet" for the missing student, then the girl who played the role of Janet got stage fright, and didn't come onstage, so I ran off and got her costume on, and came back on after the missed cue and pranced around the stage, then a boy forgot to say his line during the middle of the song, so I pretended I was him as I was still dressed as Janet, then I quickly had to go pause the CD at the end of the song, turn on the projector, go get the costume off, and console the girl. It was a whirlwind! I couldn't believe that I had 3 identical plays produced by 3 different classes, and the 3 students shows had all been so different from each other in their problems. One Kindergarten teacher brought her students to multiple shows that week, and she commented that it wasn't ever the same show twice! That afternoon, the second 4th grade class had their parent show, and they were nervous that there would be technical issues, so again I had them come early, and we ran through the entire play before the parents came so that they could be confident that everything was fixed and working fine. Again, the parent show went fabulous, and the students performed very well and we had a full and supportive audience viewing the play.

On Thursday the 28th, the final 4th grade class had their parent show that afternoon. I was happy that I'd made it this far into the week without completely losing it! Josh came home on Wednesday night, and Kanyon had a great week at his friend's house, and I was maintaining everything at home and school alone. I was looking forward to finishing off the week successfully. The last parent show ended up not being as polished as the other two parent shows, but thankfully I didn't have to play the parts for my students in it again! There were no missing students this time, just missed cues and missing props and errors in their stage blocking, but nothing too major. 

I was glad to finally have it be over. When the last 4th grade play was done, I could finally sleep again at night, and not feel so stressed during the day anymore. I told myself I would never go through this again! But the truth is, I'm pretty sure I will. I have to have long enough time in between 4th grade plays to forget about what an emotional and stressful rollercoaster ride it is before I want to do it all over again. I was thinking this was the first year I'd ever gotten so stressed about producing a play, but then I read back to last year's 4th grade play experience, and I had gotten stressed about it back then, too; I had just forgotten how much so!

I enjoy directing, producing, and teaching--otherwise I wouldn't do this job. I get paid minimum wage only for the hours I teach at school, and I have so many extra unpaid hours that I put into my job, too. I work so hard because I want my students to succeed, and I am motivated by the fact that they need me. I tell myself that if I wasn't there, the quality of their music education wouldn't be as good, and I want to always know that I put 100% into fulfilling my expectations for myself and thus, for my students. I question myself during times of stress prior to every performance if I'm in the right job for me, or if I'm doing the right things for my students. But whenever their performances happen, I'm reminded of why I love my job so much: I love watching them excel, and seeing them feel pride in their work, and knowing that what I do makes a difference in their young life, and you can't put a price tag on that kind of worth.