September 2-8
What warms a middle school teacher's heart is any time a student discovers the inner adult they didn't know was there. It's like discovering a super power. A middle schooler can take a giant step towards adulthood, then go back to being a kid again.
One of my happiest Walker memories is a recent one, a father’s conference on Zoom with Jamie Rubens and me. Jamie and I did nothing more than describe the son’s classroom demeanor. Courteous, curious, determined to make class go well, and funny, the boy was so adult, and such a kid. To our surprise, the dad wept, he was so happy.
In fall 2001, my 6th grade MSD class (Music, Speech, and Drama) composed our own opera The Frog Prince, but we ran out of time. The performance was coming up, but we still had no finale. Andreas Wilder volunteered to write something for all 24 characters to sing at the end. The next day, he apologized, "I just took some of the music from earlier scenes and changed the words. Is that okay?" I reassured him that Mozart did the same thing. Andreas had transformed what the princess sang about the frog who had risked his life to save hers. Kneeling beside his unconscious body, the princess had sung,
He's short and green,In Andreas's finale, all the students faced the audience and sang
not tall and clean,
but I think I could love him.
We know we're young
Sometimes we're lazy
Do you think you could love us?
We know we're small,
sometimes we're crazy.
Do you think you could love us?
The parents, our MS secretary Terri Woods, and even our unflappable principal Nancy Calhoun wept.
I remember fondly "Cocoa Cabaret," a middle-school version of a coffee house open mike night that we did each spring in the early 2000s. Kids went up to the mike scared and came back stars. Back then, the Middle School Band had only five players, but they wowed the audience. A shy girl with a beautiful voice had trouble with pitch, so I played a few chords from a 1920s ballad and paused when she sang a line, then I played a little more, and so on. Her voice never clashed with the piano, and no one knew that she made up her own tune in her own key. Big success!
The most memorable moment like that was a performance by Samantha Walker's middle school singers during our Black History program for Arts Month. When Rashan sang the first notes of his solo, I heard the audience of children and adults gasp at his pure, rich sound and the conviction of his delivery.
During an arts showcase, Mrs. Boyer's art classes risked monumental failure but triumphed when teams painted large landscapes live on stage. We watched the canvases go from blobby to beautiful.
At performances by the Upper School, I loved to see how students had grown. I think of Liane's singing with the jazz band, and Patrick's deep and intense performance in All My Sons. The most fun I ever had at Walker -- or ever! -- was playing piano with the orchestra for Katie Arjona's production of Sweeney Todd. Moved by the dedication and concentration of the upper school instrumentalists around me and by how each separate part fit together to support the passionate cast on stage, I had to find the notes for the finale through tears.
Grace under difficult circumstances isn't something you can always count on with middle schoolers, so it was memorable when rain and technical glitches wiped out our entire program for a retreat at a distant camp. We teachers faced the seventh grade in one room with nothing to do for the entire evening. Mike Mackey, Ayren Selzer, Susan Boyer, Lydia Drown, and Dennis McElhaney stepped up to get everyone involved. Dennis has had to fill this role many times, leading the game "Nibblety-Bibble." Some of our kids now play that game at Olympics level.
The teachers couldn't have done it, though, without the students' grace and goodwill. This wasn't what the kids wanted to do, but they understood the situation, and they played along with it.
That same grace and goodwill allowed me to fail numerous times during the months of online COVIDucation until we found ways to keep everyone engaged and producing great stuff. For that reason, I will remember the last two years of my teaching career as the best ones.
See cherished memories from the 17 years I taught at St. Andrew's School in Jackson, MS.7202 miles on my second world tour begun June 2020;
3290 miles year-to-date in 2021, average speed 15←← | ← || → Use the arrows to follow the entire bike tour from the start.
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