Let's Save the Economy

See the embedded video below for a great new Funny or Die video about Prop 8.

Once I get through the planning of this speech tournament, I'll be back more frequently. I promise!

Weekend's End

It's been nice having four days off, but tomorrow it's back to the grindstone. As much as I love long weekends, they make going back to work just that much harder. It's not that I was super busy this weekend. I think I just got used to the laziness of the long weekend -- a weekend spent cooking, catching up on things stored on the DVR, enjoying a second Thanksgiving dinner prepared for me (and a small group of friends) by my friend George (who put my turkey to shame!), drinking a fair share of wine, having a rehearsal today for a show I'm working on next weekend*, and running errands. I'm tired, but I jump back into what is sure to be a busy week of teaching, speech practice, and preparing to host a speech tournament of my own in two weeks (not stressing out about that at all!!!).

• Well, Christmas break is three weeks away!
• * George's theatre company is doing a one-time performance of Love Letters as a benefit for a local educational foundation. We did this last year when we were working on the show Luv, and the company did Love Letters last February at another venue. For the show, I put together a slide show of complimentary images that underscore the show, which has been an exhausting project. I took the show I did last February (done when I was in the middle of speech season and directing a musical and so didn't have a ton of extra time) and enhanced it and added even more to the show. I'm incredibly proud of it and love how it provides this sort of visual score to the show. I can't wait to debut the new version of the slide show to an audience!
  
  
  

Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow!

I woke up this morning to a sight that still brings thrills but even more so this year. Over the night, it snowed. There's just something so lovely about looking out a window and seeing that gentle blanket of snow -- snow when it's still untouched by plow or shovel, when it's in its pure, fresh state. This was my first time seeing my backyard with such a blanket, and it's downright beautiful.

There's another reason I was excited to see the snow -- and no, it has nothing to do with snow days. To be honest, as a teacher, I sort of hate snow days, particularly this time of year. Yes, it's nice to get a sudden "lazy day" during this busy time of year, but I inevitably spent a good portion of that day thinking about how this unexpected day off will run roughshod over my lesson plans, how losing that day may prove costly to my goal of finishing Romeo and Juliet before Christmas, how my speech team can't afford to lose that day of practice. Snow days become stess days for me as I get back to work and struggle to get my plans back on track.

No, the reason why I was excited for this snow has to do with my car and my garage. You see, until this year, I'd never had a garage in which to park my car. I always parked in driveways or on the street and would inevitably wake up on mornings such as this and think, "Crap, I have to go scrape off the car!" I would spend 15, 20 minutes scraping and brushing and freezing as I tried to remove all the snow and ice off my car. But not this year. This year, I have a garage. While people around me will spend their Sunday mornings scarping, I'll just pop right into my cozy, clean car and happily drive off without a care in the world. Granted, when bigger snows come, I will have the new "joy" of shoveling my driveway, but I'll take that over the scraping anyday. (Well, check back with me in a couple weeks and maybe my story will be slightly different.)

Let the Feasting Begin!

Tomorrow is one of my favorite days of the year. I love Thanksgiving. I love getting up on the early side and watching the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade. I always get a little teary when the Rockettes show up because that was my dad's favorite part of the parade. Every time I see them move into the kick line, I can hear my dad's delighted exclamations (the man was a sucker for a good kick line) and I'm reminded how much I miss the old man. I love seeing the performances from Broadway shows.

At some point during the morning, I drive down to the convenience store and grab the Thanksgiving day paper and some donuts so that we can pore over the Black Friday sales and strategize where we might go the next day. (Yes, I DO brave the crowds. It's like the frickin' Super Bowl!! You just need to have a clear agenda and pursue that agenda with confidence and aggression)

Best of all, I love preparing the Thanksgiving feast. I love to cook. LOVE IT. I love the feeling of making a delicious meal and sharing it with others. Thanksgiving is the high holiday for people who love to cook. I've spent weeks pondering and planning the menu, taking requests, tweaking last year's menu here and there. My mashed potatoes are amazing. My sister loves this cornbread/cheese/corn casserole I make. I love my homemade mushroom stuffing. The only thing I wimp out on is dessert. I'm not sure I'm brave enough to tackle pie crust (I know it's a real art) and by the time I make everything else, I'm a little too tired to then move onto pies or cakes or whatever else. I let the nice folks at the Hy-Vee bakery handle dessert for me this year. Maybe at Christmas, when my cooking is a little less ambitious, I'll make a great dessert.

Of course, the real purpose of tomorrow is not about parades and shopping and cooking. It's about giving thanks. I think often about the pilgrims who inspired this holiday and what they had to endure as they set up their homes in this strange new land. Their courage and perserverence paved the way for countless generations of immigrants to come here and make this their home -- and eventually our home. I am descended from those first pilgrims (from John and Priscilla Alden) as well as Irish immigrants who fled famine and Swedish immigrants looking for a better life. I am thankful for their courage and sacrifice that ultimately gave me a pretty decent life. I'm thankful for the friends who sustain me with their love and humor. I'm thankful for a career that challenges and fulfills me and allows me to make the world a better place each day in my own small way. I'm thankful for the creative outlet theatre has provided. And I'm thankful for the chance to share my meaningless little ramblings with all of you.

Have a great Thanksgiving everyone!

"There Art Thou Happy"

While I've been busy getting back into the swing of speech season with my team, I've also been able to relax into my favorite unit of the year -- teaching Romeo and Juliet. Each year, I take classes full of reluctant freshmen by the hand and introduce them to the glory of the Bard. Just about every student enters the R&J unit with trepidation. Let's face it: the dude has a bad rep. Add to that the fact that I often have classes full of students who don't treasure reading and theatre the way I do, who don't, quite frankly, treasure learning the way I do. It can be a struggle as we start the unit.

Here's the thing that people sometimes don't realize but that I figured out right away the first year I taught R&J. Shakespeare is filthy! His plays are full of double entendres, dirty jokes, and scandalous goings-on. He wrote for his commoner audience -- the exact kind of audience a lot of my students would have been back in 1592. I realized that all the kids needed was to have the poetry translated for them and they would discover the Shakespeare I loved -- the naughty poet.

Examples of said naughtiness? Well, I'm glad you asked.

In the very first scene of R&J, the servants of the Capulet and Montague houses get into a huge fight in "downtown" Verona. The cause of this fight? As Abraham and Balthasar are walking by, Sampson bites his thumb. The kids are always confused by this. "Who cares if this dude is biting his thumb?" a student might ask. That's when I explain to them that biting your thumb at someone was the 16th Century equivalent of giving someone the middle finger today. The kids burst into laughter as suddenly the exchange that follows makes sense -- hilarious sense.

ABRAHAM
Do you bite your thumb at us, sir?
SAMPSON
I do bite my thumb, sir.
ABRAHAM
Do you bite your thumb at us, sir?
SAMPSON
[Aside to GREGORY] Is the law of our side, if I sayay?
GREGORY
No.
SAMPSON
No, sir, I do not bite my thumb at you, sir, but Ibite my thumb, sir.

And they've now learned a great new insulting gesture!

We later get to the conversation between Benvolio and Romeo where we learn that Romeo is depressed. The kids seem to grasp right away that Romeo's depression stems from romantic problems, but together we dig deeper to discover the real cause of the lady's rejection of Romeo.

ROMEO
Well, in that hit you miss: she'll not be hit
With Cupid's arrow; she hath Dian's wit;
And, in strong proof of chastity well arm'd,
From love's weak childish bow she lives unharm'd.
She will not stay the siege of loving terms,
Nor bide the encounter of assailing eyes,
Nor ope her lap to saint-seducing gold:
O, she is rich in beauty, only poor,
That when she dies with beauty dies her store.
BENVOLIO
Then she hath sworn that she will still live chaste?
ROMEO
She hath, and in that sparing makes huge waste,
For beauty starved with her severity
Cuts beauty off from all posterity.
She is too fair, too wise, wisely too fair,
To merit bliss by making me despair:
She hath forsworn to love, and in that vow
Do I live dead that live to tell it now.

The problem is that Romeo's lady has taken a vow of chastity. In other words, Romeo's not getting any. Again, once we work through this idea of the lady's chastity and the kids realize what such a vow means, they're once again highly entertained. "So basically, Romeo's horny?" one will ask and, cool teacher that I am, I just nod and say, "Yup."

On top of having the opportunity to hold a class of freshmen in the palm of my hand for 50 minutes each day that we read R&J as they wait eagerly to discover what new naughty gem awaits them in the pages of the play, I also get the joy of reading Shakespeare aloud every day. While I have students assume various roles, I always keep one or two good parts for myself. During the course of the unit, I get the thrill of playing just about every major character in the play -- Romeo, Juliet, Mercutio, the Nurse, the Friar, Lord Capulet. And believe me, I give it my all. The kids were shocked yesterday when I played Lord Capulet and shifted from gracious party host to bullying uncle in the blink of an eye. (I did feel a bit sorry for the poor kid playing Tybalt who had to be on the receiving end of "my" fury) It's times like these when I stop and marvel, "Damn, they PAY me to do this."

A Missive from Speechopolis

Fear not, dear readers, I am still out here in the middle of the corn toiling away. Although it's been a week since my last post, I'm okay. I've been fighting a bit of writer's bloc, at a loss of anything particlarly deep or profound or entertaining to put out there. In addition, I've just been super busy trying to manage my speech team.

When I took over as coach of the team 2 years ago, I inherited a relatively small team of about 10 kids. As assistant coach, I'd worked with the kids and felt like I had a pretty good handle on how to run a team on my own. Of course, I didn't take into account that I would not have an assistant. (My term as assistant coach was mostly an "apprentice" period to prepare me for taking over the team when the head coach retired. It was our clever scheme to make sure that the team would be passed onto me and not onto a new hire.) I also didn't take into account the fact that the team might grow. Last year, the team was about 15 kids strong. This year, we're up to 20. So the team has doubled in 2 years. And there's little old me spending a good 2-3 hours after school every night trying to groom those 20 kids into award-winning prose readers and dramatic interpreters and impromptu speakers and more. I'm exhausted! And the season is only 2 weeks old!!!

Of course, the young season has already provided its share of tears, drama, and laughter. I've already shared the story of Jodi, my homeless student, who debuts her piece this weekend, who cried when I told her the speech team would pay for her speech team t-shirt. There's Malik, one of the team's star seniors who had a slight breakdown at his debut last weekend, putting pressure on himself to top last season's success (which included being the only member of the team to break into finals at Sectionals). There's Matthew, one of our "newbies" who, in his own case of stage fright and worrying he would forget his memorized piece during performance, wrote it on his hands -- and then flashed his hands, covered in blue ink, to the judges. There's Emily, another "newbie" who is trying her hand at impromptu speaking. Emily's first speech that she practiced with me was roughly one minute long. For her second speech a day or two later, her topic was "A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush," a proverb she clearly had never heard before judging by the speech she delivered that involved her rambling about tame birds and wild birds and somehow devolved into a discussion of petting dogs and the need to wash your hands afterwards. Emily is very sweet and earnest but it's clear she's lacking in exposure to culture and vocabulary. (A more recent practice involved her relating the plot of a book she'd read for a book report where a young woman was raped and "was really not happy about it.") I've recommended she start keeping a journal where she writes down books and stories she's read, to start spending time on the internet reading about historical figures and sayings. I even recommended she spend some time on SparkNotes (which caused one of my juniors to gasp in horror) to learn about some more "literary" novels than the ones she's reading for her book reports. There's no way this kid could probably handle reading Anna Karenina, but she may be able to handle the SparkNotes for it -- and add some intellectual heft to her speeches that they might not otherwise have.

This Saturday, I'm taking all 20 kids to a tournament just outside Peoria. For some, it may be the start of a successful season. For others, it could be an ego-shattering experience. But through it all, I have to remain the rock and keep my own ego and competitive spirit in check -- something that's easier said than done, I know.

The Kids Are Alright. (Well, at least the speech kids are)

As many of you know, in addition to being an English teacher and drama director, I'm also coach of my school's speech team. I love my extracurricular duties because it allows me to really connect with my kids in an entirely different way and really feel the difference I'm making in a more immediate way. My speech and drama kids are a terrific group of kids -- very funny and loyal. I jokingly call them my minions, but it's sort of sadly true. I have kids who just come into my room after school to hang out. They're pretty devoted to me -- and I'm pretty devoted to them.

The nice thing about my kids is, while they're a very tight group, they're also very open to newcomers. They're excited when new kids join the team and are so kind about helping them out, even if that new kid is technically their "competition" in a particular event. I'm really lucky that they're so supportive, and I've never felt luckier than I did today.

Backtrack about 2 weeks. I was in my classroom before school when a young woman walked in. Jodi was dressed in that sort of punk/emo/goth look that kids sport nowadays with the Nightmare Before Christmas t-shirt over a short skirt and striped tights and Chucks. She had been a student at our school before but had moved this year, only to come back. She told me that she wanted to join speech team, so I gave her a list of events and asked her what she thought she might like. She picked an event where I had an opening (and even already had a script cut and ready to go), took the script I gave her, signed up for practice times, and went on her merry way. Jodi came in for her practice today. A couple other kids were in the room waiting for their times to practice and so they sat and waited and listened while Jodi practiced her rather tough monologue, a cutting from Blackbird by David Harrower.

After her practice, Jodi asked me about this weekend's tournament -- what time we'd be leaving, when we'd be getting back, and what to bring. I said, "You're responsible for your own meals, so you'll need to bring some money for lunch or just pack a lunch."

Jodi's face fell as she said, "Oh. That might be a problem. You see, I'm homeless. I live at Starting Point." (Starting Point is the local homeless shelter)

Before I could even say a word, Rachel (whom you may remember as my super AD from The Matchmaker) jumped in and said, "Oh, don't worry. I always bring a TON of food*. We've got you covered. You won't need a thing!"

It was all I could do to stop myself from hugging Rachel, who can sometimes me a little blunt and a little lacking in tact and doesn't always think before she speaks. Had those words come from Katrina, who was also standing right there and whose father is a minister, I wouldn't have thought a thing about it since Katrina is probably one of the nicest people in the school. But for Rachel to show that kind of generosity . . . that kid's going to be all right. They're all going to be all right.

* Note: Rachel's statement BARELY qualifies as hyperbole. She packs for a speech tournament like she's going on a yearlong cruise around the world -- backpacks with multiple changes of clothes, food, blankets, games, etc. I had to give her the talk about how since we were taking a smaller bus this weekend, she was going to have to pack a little less thoroughly.