Teaching Journalism

 

 

Ned Flanders, the principal at GJ High School allowed me to take the Journalism Class when the original teacher dropped out or wanted a change.  I don’t recall the details of that, only that suddenly there was an opening and it was offered to me.

My suspicion is that Mr. Flanders felt since he was stuck with me on his staff, that I would cause fewer problems with an elective than if I were in an English classroom.  As I have said my classroom management skills were very weak.

When I say that my classroom management skills were weak, what I am actually saying is that my classroom management skills were not like most teachers.  Most teachers want absolute control.  Most teachers want to enforce silence, to control movement, and get instant compliance to their orders.  Any teacher that is not like that is called weak, they let the kids run wild.  

I agree that given the ambiance of most schools I deserved the label of a teacher with weak classroom management skills, but it is possible that I was not as horrible at teaching as some thought.  If education is there to allow a student to learn how to learn, and to learn in cooperation with other learners, then such a classroom will be louder.  Think about when you, as an adult, have worked on a project that required a group of other adults to brainstorm, cooperate, and to problem solve together.  Do you stay on task all the time when working with your group?  If you do, you are in a group unlike any adult group I’ve ever seen.  It is my experience that the talking off task is part of relationship building, and working with people with whom you have a relationship makes it easier to problem solve with the goal of accomplishing something in the end.

When I am stuck I often find that it is when I stop struggling, take a break, do something else, that a possible solution pops into my head.  I’m just saying it is possible that sometimes I was doing good work, but in a way that did not fit the expectations of the people around me.

Now as soon as I took the journalism class I realized that I never should have been given the school newspaper and the journalism classes, because I never took a journalism class. My only experience with journalism is when I was the advertising manager of the Wewoka Daily Times.  This was before the common use of the computer by the masses.  I didn’t really know about Journalism style other than you put your important information first and as your story goes your lessor information is added.  This way, to make a story fit in the space available you can cut paragraphs from the bottom.

The journalism classroom was small and filled with Mac Computers loaded with the Page Maker software.  I had never used a Mac, and I had no clue how to use the Page Maker program.  I remember that school was going to have a long weekend.  Labor Day is the first Monday in September which meant that I had Saturday through Monday, three days, to learn how to use Page Maker.

I got my only friend at the school, Mario Crews to give me a key to the school so I could work on the Mac/Page Maker over this long weekend.  I went to Barnes and Noble to buy a Page Maker For Dummies book.  I worked from afternoon to after 11 pm night after night and by Tuesday I knew how to use Page Maker.  

Maybe I wasn’t as proficient as real gifted computer users, but I knew it well enough to lay up pages and prepare them for a printer.  I had another asset:  my students.  Kids are often better at using a computer than their old guy teacher, and I knew if I could teach them the basics that they could go from there to improve our skills.  

The previous journalism teacher had printed a paper that was printed on slick paper, and she could send the lay up digitally to a printer she’d worked with back when she was at a previous high school.  The cost of printing the school paper was in the area of $600.  My goal was to have the paper published monthly, and the journalism students worked hard so that we could get the paper out.  We charged a dime for the paper.

Our first paper was well received by most people.  It was a safe effort.  I did get some negative feedback because we had a couple of typos that were missed.  These typo matters always, always, always hit me right in the heart.  I was a lifelong poor speller.  I would think, anyone who spelled as poorly as I did would have no business being an editor, and to be the editor of students trying to learn the journalism skill, well, obviously I was a poor choice as teacher.  Nevertheless, I was the teacher.  I had the duty.  I needed to endure the criticism.  I had to do my best for the students.  I know this will sound like a big ole frickin’ lie, but I loved my students.\

THE STUDENTS

I think I only had a couple of students that signed up for journalism that I did not know.  Most of my students in journalism were kids I’d had in drama, and kids that had been in my plays.  You can’t rehearse and put on a play without getting to know your actors and crew as humans with a life outside of school.  I think the cruelty I witnessed by some teachers can be blamed on them not seeing students as whole sentient human beings.

I’m going to change some names because I want to pretend no one will know who I’m talking about.  I’ll start with a student I’ll call Mike Carter.  

Mike Carter is one of the students that I grew extremely close to, and he was a kid I have continued to be in touch with, now that he is a grown man.  My first encounter with Mike could easily have been my last.  Mike came to my introduction to drama class, and he had changed his name.  Mike’s old name was on the student roll so when I was calling roll and called his old name, [it was something like Leslie, or Barney, or something easy to not like]  Mike was immediately mad at me.  Too bad.  I didn’t embarrass him on purpose.  If that had been the only problem that first day of class we could have survived it, but then I had an activity that required the students to get in front of the class and tell something about themselves.

Later I learned that Mike had this horrible case of stage fright.  Mike was so terrified of getting up in front of the class that he had a panic attack.  I was called to the back of the classroom [I think this was when we were having class on the stage] and there was Mike on the floor, curled into a fetal position and he was unresponsive to my voice.  I buzzed the office saying I needed an administrator at the theatre asap.

As soon as Mike heard that I’d called for someone to come down from the office he snapped out of it.  Mike had this look of intense anger on his face.  

He said something like, “Why did you do that.  You have ruined my life.  I’ll be the laughing stock of the school.”  I’m sure his words were sharper, clearer and firmer than what I can reconstruct.  When Mr. Cruz got to the theatre Mike was fine.  He was not on the floor.  He did not look nervous.

Mr. Cruz was sure Mike must be a drug user and this curling up on the floor was from a drug overdose.  The problem with this knee jerk response is that Mike was unimpaired.  Mike was sober.  Rage had sobered him up.

I was so afraid that I had hurt this young man, embarrassed him, and that he and I were never going to get along.  I was wrong.  Mike turned out to be a very intelligent guy.  Mike also turned out be a skilled actor, and I ended up casting him in every production he tried out for, often he was the lead.  

When I took the school newspaper on, Mike signed up for journalism.  Abe Giltmore was another student that had been cast in God’s Favorite, he was in the drama club, and he followed me into the journalism class.  Abe was sort of disabled.  Abe had Low Vision.  He was not totally blind, but he may have been, and probably was legally blind.  I am sure Abe would never be allowed to drive.  Abe wanted to be a writer.  I grew extremely close to Abe.  I know I shouldn’t have done it, but I would often take kids home after rehearsals.  My practice was always to drop the girls off first.  The last thing a teacher wants is to be accused of inappropriate behavior with a girl student and if I still had male students in the car when I dropped off the last girl I usually felt safe-er.  Abe was often the last kid I dropped off and he and I talked a lot.  Abe’s parents were somewhat prosperous, at least compared to me.  They lived in a nice house.  Abe had a little brother and a stepmother.  

There were others that I was extremely fond of:  Judy George, Jason Rippito, Max Anderson, Candye Capers and two music loving best friends:  Liz Goldstine and Patsy Peterson.

THE PAPERS

The first issue did not sell.  I was concerned.  I had a ton of unsold papers.  What happened is that one or two kids would buy a paper, and after they scanned it, they let other students read the paper for free.

The key to selling the paper was when a student had their picture or name included in an issue.  But I realized out of over 2000 students at GJ High School, I was not going to get 2000 names in every issue.

It occurred to me that in the real newspaper business that subscription fees were never enough to support to cost of producing a newspaper.  Paying for the cost, and earning the profit, comes from money generated by advertising.  I decided to do two things:  

1. I would seek a cheaper way to publish the paper.  Paying $600 per issue seemed too high to me.
2. I decided to get my students to sell ads and give the paper to the student body.

I did find a place to get the paper published.  In Bartow there was a small town newspaper that was willing to print our paper at a much cheaper price.  One of the reasons it was cheaper is that it was not printed on slick paper like a school board newsletter, it was going to be printed on real news print.  The school newspaper was going to look like a real newspaper.  I thought this was not only good because it was cheaper, but it was good because it was in the form of an actual newspaper.  

I being the poor visionary that I am, had no idea that the days of the newspaper were numbered.  Again, it really doesn’t matter, because the specifics that one teaches are not all that important.  Life is change.  The gift of education is when the learner learns how to learn.

Still, because I had no clue about the future, I was thrilled to find a cheaper way to print the paper.

The second step was to get the students to sell enough ads to pay for the paper, enabling me to give the paper away.  Most of my students could drive, and most of them had cars.  Journalism was the last period of the school day.  We would brainstorm possible businesses that might buy ads.  I had the students think what family and family friends might buy ads in our paper.  After we had exhausted the easy sell folk, we had to reach out to businesses that support the schools, or have a business within the GH High School.  I had the kids go out and interview people, and two or three days a week they were in the class writing.  The other days they would check in, get passes to leave and they would go out and sell ads.

Now I knew that young people, given freedom to be away from the peering eyes of teachers and parents, will not always do the things adults would want them to do.  Sometimes kids, off the leash, might smoke cigarettes, or marijuana, and they might, from time to time drink alcohol, meet up with sexually pliable young ladies, et cetera, et cetera.  Now did my wonderful young journalists sluff off the selling of ads to do naughty stuff?  I have no idea.  I suspect that such things might have happened from time to time.

The thing is, even if the kids were less than diligent 100% of the time, we still sold enough ads to publish the paper, we never got behind on the cost, and all went well, some of the time.  

Two Negative Stories About Journalism

The Ad Story

Like the times I was called in about the theatre, I got a PA call to report to Nad Flander’s office.  I went with that same feeling all children get being called to the principal’s office.  What did I do wrong this time.
 

The wrong this time was unexpected.

“I got a call,” Mr. Flanders said, from a parent of one of your journalism students.”

“O. K.”

“Did you accept an ad from the Women’s Center for Health?”

I had to think a moment.  Then I remembered the ad had come in at the end of last week.  It was an ad one of the students brought in, because his mother was an administrator of the Women’s Center for Health and she wanted to help support the newspaper.  I shared what I knew with Mr. Flanders.

“Are you knowingly accepting an ad from an abortion clinic?” he asked.

“Uh, er, ulm,” I said because I am fast on my feet, “well, I guess I didn’t know the Women’s Center for Health was an abortion clinic.”

“Well, they are,” Mr. Flanders said, “and this is just the sort of thing I would expect from someone like you.”

The conversation was not going well.

“What does that mean, ‘someone like me.’ ” I asked.

“You are liberal,” he said.  “You tolerate what almost no other teacher would tolerate.”

“Are you sure this is an abortion clinic?” I asked trying to refocus the conversation.  “It sounds like it would be a place where people would go for women health things.  You know like screenings for breast cancer, uterine cancer, and maybe they might give out birth control.”

“Maybe you are right, Tex,” Flanders said, “but that is enough knowledge to call your decision into question. I can’t believe you would place the school in this sort of position where we are advocating birth control and abortion to our student body.”

“The ad doesn’t say anything about anything,”  I explained. “The ad is the name of the place, the address, and a phone number.  Other than Women’s Health Center, it doesn’t say what goes on there.  I was thinking it was just a clinic.”

“You need to return that money to the student’s mother, and you are not to take ads of a controversial nature anymore.”

I did as directed.  What pissed me off most about this whole thing is that at the end of the school year, when the yearbooks were passed out, there was that same exact ad in the yearbook, supporting the cost of printing the yearbook.

Why wasn’t the yearbook teacher called in, bent over, and reamed out like I’d been?

I liked my students, but I was not feeling so warm and fuzzy towards the administration.

    42 Students Left on the Side of the Road

My second story about teaching journalism had to do with one of our front page stories.  

The incident actually happened to Mike Carter, one of my journalism students.  What happened is that while taking students home from school, the students on the bus got unruly.  I have forgotten the details, but it seems like something happened like one or two or maybe ten kids had water guns or maybe there was some sort of pushing and shoving going on, but whatever it was that happened, the bus driver got pissed off, and after yelling at the students and when they would not quiet down and stop whatever it was they were doing, the bus driver stopped the bus, ordered all the students off the bus and then the driver drove off and left 42 students on the side of the road.  

Lakeland is not a small town, but it is also not a megalopolis.  The spot where the 42 students were dumped off was like a rural road.  There was no sidewalk.  The students had to walk home walking a long a two lane blacktopped road with just a small shoulder.  This was, in my view dangerous.  This was also a real story.

I had one of the students call the district administrator in charge of transportation.  We got a no comment, but we went to the Assistant Superintendent over our area of the district and the next time we spoke with the transportation administrator he said personal matters were confidential, but he was willing to say that the matter was under review and appropriate steps would be taken.

We printed the story with a couple of sidebars.  We had interviews with some of  students who’d been put off the bus, a parent, and the comments from the transportation dude.

What followed was another PA call for Mr. Norman to report to Mr. Flander’s office.

To show how stupid I am, I had no clue this story was going to get me into hot water.  

Mr. Flanders sat me down.  He sat in the chair next to me, instead of behind his desk, or on the corner of his desk.  

“Why?” he asked me, “why would you print a story like this?”  His hand patted the Eagle Eye Newspaper resting in his lap, the 42 Students story facing up.

“Why wouldn’t I publish the story?” I asked back, and I was genuinely nonplused

“It’s something that happened.”

“A lot of things happen,” Mr. Flanders said.  “It is your responsibility, as the teacher to help the journalism students make the right choices about what is covered.”

“I did that.  I encouraged the students to write about this incident.  One of the journalism students was on the bus.”

“A story like this brings shame and embarrassment to the school district,” Mr. Flanders said.

“And by focusing on the incident, and because of the shame and embarrassment, what happened is less likely to happen again.”  I actually believed that.  I stupidly thought that bringing attention to something bad would help to keep that particular bad from being repeated.

“Why does everything have to be negative with you,” Mr. Flanders said, and I could figure out, being a student of human behavior, that my principal was pissed off at me.  “Why couldn’t you do a story like, 10,000 STUDENTS TRANSPORTED DAILY -- NO ACCIDENTS.”

i didn’t mean to, but I had my ARE YOU FUCKIN’ KIDDING ME look on my face.

“What you are asking me to do to write only positive stuff, and that is not news,” I said.

“It is news,” he countered.  “Thousands of students are transported to and from school every day and there are almost never any accidents.  How is that not newsworthy?”

I couldn’t believe I was having this conversation.

“Good news is only news if it is unusual.  Given your view, I could write a story about how many people swallow successfully every day.  That is just not news because it is so common that it is not unusual enough to be of interest to readers.  Unusual stuff is newsworthy stuff.”

“But you are not the Lakeland Ledger, or the New York Times, you’re the journalism teacher of a school newspaper, paid for by the school.”

“Are you saying a school newspaper should not print newsworthy stories about things that happened to our own student body?”

“Have you ever heard DON’T BITE THE HAND THAT FEEDS YOU?” Mr. Flanders said.   “You can print about up and coming events, the results of football games, and take pictures at the prom, but a school newspaper is not there to air the school districts dirty laundry for all to read.”

“I’m supposed to be teaching the students journalism.  Real journalism is not sterile, antiseptic stories approved by those in authority.  Don’t you want me to teach the students how to be real journalist?  Or am I supposed to teach them how to be public relations writers, or propagandists?”

I got through the year, but I was not interested in being a journalism teacher another year.  I figure that was a mutual decision for me and Flanders.

The Drama Teacher Part Two

 

 

This is me with some of the cast from The Clumsy Custard Horror Show - Jason Chachula is on my right and Mark Nixon is on my left.  I have facial hair because while I was directing Clumsy Custard I was also in a community theatre production of Man of LaMancha

I ended up directing a number of plays while teaching drama at George Jenkins High School.  

• Whodunit
• The Nut Factory
• The Mouse That Roared

Then I came to the best play I ever directed:  

• Neil Simon’s God’s Favorite.

God’s Favorite was a retelling of the Book of Job by one of America’s most competent playwrights.

One thing I learned from directing God’s Favorites is that directing a good play is better than directing a bad play.  

So often, when you put on school plays you get the Samuel French or Dramatic Publishing catalogue and study it before selecting the play or plays you intend to produce that school year.

While most of these companies have some classic, famous, excellent plays, they also might charge more for the rights to those “good” plays.  These companies also have tons of plays written specifically for high school or middle school drama programs.  Those plays are cheaper to put on, the authors usually know to limit the set to one location because having several locations is just more expensive and harder to do.  I put on some of these cheaper plays and they were OK, but when it came to God’s Favorite the script was just so very good.

I had a lot of problems I had to address.

In one scene, the character that was sort of the “devil” or “protagonist,” enters the stage by busting through a fireplace and scattering bricks everywhere.  I got around that by building the fireplace but when it came to the face of the fireplace I purchased foam blocks used for flower arranging.  They were brick sized blocks.  I used white Styrofoam about an inch thick and cut it to make the mortar.  I used watercolor and a lot of water to just dirty the foam so it wasn’t bright white, it was mortar looking.  The planter foam blocks were green, but I painted them red and used a darker color of red to give each brick some depth.
 

This allowed the actor to bust through the fireplace and after that play was over I just restacked the foam bricks and reset the mortar foam.  

 

The big stage set issue with God’s Favorite was that there was only one set, a living room, but in act one it was beautiful, and in act two there had been a fire.

I went to Salvation Army and found two couches that were identical.  Now my first idea was to set one of the couches on fire, have the fire department put the fire out, and get the newspapers there to photograph the event to add publicity to the production.  The fire department was full of spineless weenies who did not bend rules for a higher cause.  

I ended up giving one of the couches a makeup job.  I used a chainsaw to rip up the couch and then I used black and gray spray paint to make it look like that couch had burned.

Next I had to figure out how to have the walls pristine and bright in act one and dulled by smoke damage in act two.  I bought yards of black filmy cloth.  I attached this diaphanous sheer black material to the top of the set walls.  The cloth hung on the back side of the walls in act one, but during the intermission we used poles to push the cloth over the wall and allowed them to hang on the audience side of the set walls.  Letting the cloth hang over the paintings I had on the walls just made it look like the pictures were smoked too.  During the intermission the backstage crew switched couches, knocked stuff over, covered the walls with the Smokey cloth, and we used a fog machine to fill the set with smoke.  

The actors had ashen smudged costumes and put soot-like marks on their faces.  

When the curtain opened for act two and the smoke was there, everything really looked like the aftermath of a fire and the first night I could hear the shock coming from the audience.

God’s Favorite was a fantastic play.  I take some credit for the set, but the cast was just incredible.  We ended up running the show six times which is a lot for high school.

The play not only earned me a lot of money for the program, but it brought me into my first conflict with administrators.

During the rehearsal someone in the cast invited the principal watch a rehearsal because they were so proud of the play.  After watching the rehearsal, I was called into the office.  One of Joe’s children had a drinking problem.  Joe was the name Neil Simon gave his Job character. I had collected a lot of empty liquor bottles, several were donated by my priest, and I filled the bottles with tea or water.  Several times in one scene between the kid and his father, the kid was pouring himself drinks and acting drunk.

The principal asked me if I thought showing someone drinking alcohol was sending the wrong message to the students?  

I was flummoxed by the principal’s concern.  I explained that what is there does not matter.  What matters is what the play is saying about what is there.  You could show someone stealing something, but if the point of the play is that stealing is wrong, then it would not be irresponsible to have a play about stealing.  If the play was about a rape, but the rape was depicted as a crime, and that it was shown to be a criminal act, then wouldn’t the point of the play be good, even though there was something bad within the story.

I added that I had money invested in the play, that the cost of the set was pretty high, as far as high school plays go, and the students had rehearsed for many hours and their families were anxiously anticipating this play.  I had about 50 students involved in the production.  

I prevailed, and the play went on and was wonderfully received by virtually everyone who saw the play, but the experience was off putting.  I could not believe the fake drinking in the context of a play could be seen as risky and perhaps a promoting of immoral behavior.  It was a freakin’ play and we were not putting this play on in church.

THE COMPETITION

Lakeland had an Arts High School, and the teachers there were fantastic.  There was no way I could compete with The School of the Arts magnet school, but I did try to have as excellent a program as possible.  I started putting on two, then three plays a school year and one talent show.  

I found out about an organization for drama students called The Thespian Society.

Back in my days as President of the Putnam City teachers I was one of the people defending an orchestra teacher who was losing his job.  The district fired him because he had lots of complaints about his program and the numbers of students in his program was falling.  Plummeting is perhaps a better word.

It was a sad case because the man’s wife had cancer.  His wife was at the hearing before the school board.  His wife had a scarf covering her chemo-bald head.  We lost that hearing and it was devastating to the man and his dying wife.

One thing I remembered about that case was that if you are an electives teacher, and if you want to keep being an electives teacher then your kids have to like your class.  You have to do things to make the experience fun.  A dull electives class means the electives teacher is soon going to be reassigned or terminated.

When I found out I could escape teaching English and teach all drama classes then I was highly motivated to build my program.  At the end of each year I gave out engraved awards.  My drama club participated in Thespian competitions.  We always had cast parties.  I tried to make rehearsals as fun as that important work can be.

Another thing I tried to do is have at least one play that included a lot of students.  

I remember one wonderful effort with a play called The Competition.  I built some big square boxes on rollers.  I think there were four groups of kids competing in a one act play contest.  One group was preppies, one group was like Rock Metalheads, one group was doing King Lear as Kabuki theatre.  

It was the Kabuki part that got me in trouble.  There was a place where the stage directions said that King Lear was saying the words, “Let copulation thrive.”  Since Kabuki is silent, the actor delivering that line was to make hip thrusting motions.

Apparently one of the kids in the play when home with the script, and because literacy is so weak in this country, the student did not know the word copulation.  The student asked a parent what the word copulation meant.

So during rehearsals I hear an announcement [school was out so this was just a lazy way to contact me] saying, “Mr. Norman please report to Mr. Flander’s office.”  Getting called to the principal’s office is just as unpleasant for teachers as it is for students.

I found myself sitting in a chair and the principal sitting on the edge of his desk appearing to be casual, while being sure he was higher than me and sort of looming over me.

“Now tex, why would you put on a play like this?  Can you imagine how embarrassed that mother was to have her little girl asking her to explain what the word copulation means?”

“It was a line from Shakespeare's King Lear?” I thought that should be enough to defend the play.  I mean what was Flanders going to do, censor Shakespeare?

Apparently just saying it was from Shakespeare was not going to be enough.

“I just don’t know why you selected a play that uses a word like copulation in the script.”

“I didn’t, and it doesn’t,” I countered.  The line is in the Stage Directions.  The word copulation is never said in this play.”

Reluctantly I was allowed to return to the theatre and continue with the rehearsals.

I thought all was well, but all was not well.

The following day, yes, the very next day, I hear an announcement echo through the mostly empty school, “Mr. Norman, please report to the principal’s office.”

This time I’m told that the mother was not satisfied with his decision to allow the play to continue, so she had called a school board member, and the school board member had called him, and now Mr. Flanders was wanting to kill the play.  Again.

“The school board member wants some justification for why we would select and present a play to students that contains the word copulation.  What would you have me tell him?”

Well I was steamed about this.  I felt hassled.  I collected my thoughts and presented my case.

“First of all, as I told you yesterday, the word copulation is not uttered on the stage, not even one time, the word is in the Stage Directions that the audience never ever hears.”

“But,” Mr. Flanders said in a way that looked like he had just hooked me and was about to reel me in, “the actor makes silly fake Japanese sounds and  then they make thrusting motions with their hips.  Why would you let that happen in public?”

“Have you seen the cheerleaders perform at a pep rally?  They not only do thrusts with their hips, but they get on the floor and make humping motions.  They look like they are practicing for a career on a Strippers Pole.  And almost every student watches the cheerleaders gyrate in a provocative manner, and far more students see that that see the school plays.”

Mr. Flanders was silent.

“Secondly,” I continued, “the line Let Copulation Thrive” comes from the play King Lear.  They study King Lear in advanced senior English.  If the line in stage directions is so outrage to you and the school board, then why do you allow King Lear to be studied in a classroom where the line is not in stage directions but is part of the dialogue and it is said outloud if the play is read aloud, and it is certainly heard if they watch the play on film or in an actual performance.  You know Advanced English has done both.”

Mr. Flanders was silent.

Finally I just put it to the guy.  “What do you want me to do?  I work for you.  Do you want me to kill the play?  Then I’ll go down to that theatre and send the cast and crew home and we will cancel the play.”

“No, don’t do that,” he said.

“Well am I going to be called down here every day or two to justify the offensive word in the stage directions?”

Mr. Flanders was silent.

THE CLUMSY CUSTARD HORROR SHOW

The Clumsy Custard Horror Show was a fun play.  The main character has these special shoes that cause him to go into happy feet dances.  I cast the happy feet character with this kid I’ll call Gryphin Parks.  Gryphin Parks was the son of the Sheriff, or Chief of Police, or maybe he was a local National Guard Brigadier General.  Whatever, Gryphin’s father was a humorless tyrant who barked orders and expected perfect responses from his son.  I am not sure what happened, but Gryphin, like many oppressed young men, had a tendency to rebel.  His father got pissy about something and as punishment made Gryphin resign from the show two weeks before the show was to open.  I was upset, but I had a very talented kid that hung around and he was willing to take the role of Happy Feet, learn the lines, the blocking, and wonderful, wonderful:  his feet fit the shoes.  I’d taken some cheap pool shoes from Walmart and, in my almost negligible spare time, I had sewn silver sequins all over the shoes giving them the sparkly look from the audience point of view, that the shoes were made of pure recently polished silver.

Things went well, for a couple of weeks of rehearsal, but then the snag came.  

Then Gryphin was so upset about losing the lead role in the school play that he did something to convince his politically powerful father to lift his punishment back when his father made him quit the play.  Naturally I felt sorry for Gryphin.  But I had already given the role to Buz Rockford.

I met with Buzz and asked him if he would consider being the lead in two shows, and allow Gryphin to play the part in two shows.  Buzz agreed.  

I brought Gryphin back in and would have scenes with Happy Feet rehearsed twice:  once with Buzz and once with Gryphin.  I thought Gryphin would appreciate being able to come back into the show, but I was unwilling to jilt Buzz who had worked hard to come up to speed basically in a few days.  I was especially unwilling to give the role back to Gryphin totally, because, well, his father had pulled him out once -- so what’s to say the father wouldn’t pull him out of the play opening night.

Things did not go smoothly.  The two leads did not get along and most of the friction was coming from Gryphin who has some of his father’s asshole personal traits.  During one rehearsal the friction was so bad that Gryphin wanted to fight and threatened Buzz saying, “I’m going to break your fucking arms.”

For that remark, and the fact that friction is not what you need just days before opening night, I kicked Gryphin out of the play a second time.

The following day something familiar happens.  In a mostly empty building I hear on the PA system, “Mr. Norman.  Please report to Mr. Flander’s office immediately.”

Called to the office.  Again.  

I trudge down to the office and Mr. Flanders tells me that Gryphin’s politically powerful father has called him, the principal, and asked him to talk to me, the teacher and get me to change my decision to kick his son out of the school play.

I refuse to change my decision.  I could see Mr. Flanders squirming.  I could tell he felt pressure to do what Gryphin’s father was wanting.  

Now when you are in a position where you do not have the majority of the power, or, as in my case, hardly any of the power, the thing to do is to use your power to persuade through stunning rationale.  I turned on my persuade and rationale skills.

“Mr. Flanders,  Gryphin used the F word and threatened to break another student’s arms.  If this had happened in a math class what would you have done?  Wouldn’t you have suspended Gryphin for a couple of days or given him 5 days of In School Suspension?  Shouldn’t he have some punishment for his actions?”

Obviously I was right, and Flanders knew I was right.

He pressed me anyway, to relent, to allow Gryphin back into the play.  We were just a few days from opening the play.  When I could see Mr. Flanders was not going to stop pressuring me, I pulled out the only card I had left.

“I am not willing to let Gryphin back into the play, but if this matter will not go away, then I am willing to cancel the play.  But IF I cancel the play I will have to tell the cast and parents why I am canceling the play.”

Flanders could see that if the play was canceled three days before the play was to go on that he was going to get heat for his role in the cancellation.  So I won.  Temporarily.

The following day, during rehearsals, Mr. Flanders shows up at the theatre and pulls me away from the activities.  Mr. Flanders tells me that Gryphin’s father wants to talk to me directly.

I guess the idea was that if Mr. Flanders couldn’t get me to change my mind, then perhaps a direct conversation with a powerful elected leader would be just the kick in the crotch to get me to relent.

Gryphin’s dad:  Mr. Norman, this is Sheriff, or General, or Judge Parks, and. . .

Obviously I can’t recall the exact conversation, but Daddy Parks said he had gone too far pulling his son out of the play, that he was wrong about that, and I should not punish his son for something he the father had done.

I explained that I agreed he had been excessively harsh, and that he showed no regard for the ramification his actions had caused the drama department in our efforts to produce the school play.  I said that I had no way to know if Gryphin might upset you [his father] again, and you might pull him out of the play an hour before opening night.

Daddy Parks countered with an emotional punch.  He said his son was so depressed that he was suffering .   He reminded me that Gryphin was a senior and this was his last chance to be the lead in a school play.

I reminded Daddy Parks, and I used the language to make it clear WHY I had kicked his son out of the play, “Gryphin threatened another student and said, ‘I’m going to break your fucking arms.’  I can’t just ignore that sort of behavior.”

Daddy Parks would not relent so I resorted to my old broken record method when dealing with someone who will just not give up.  I had to wear him down.  The broken record method works this way.

Allow your loony upset person vent.

Then say, “I hear what you are saying, but I am going to stand by my decision to kick Gryphin out of the play.”

Loony person vents some more.

Then say, “I hear what you are saying, but I am going to stand by my decision to kick Gryphin out of the play.”

Loony person vents more.

Then say, “I hear what you are saying, but I am going to stand by my decision to kick Gryphin out of the play.”

If you can stay the course the loony venting jerk will eventually get frustrated and give up.

It took awhile.

Part of me loved teaching drama.  Dealing with a principal whose main concern was looking good and having the school look good, well, that part was the opposite of fun.

This was the cast of the Clumsy Custard Horror Show.  
 

This was Happy Feet, the good guy one, with the imprisoned Princess in Stage Lip Lock.