why are there so many guidos?

i recently discovered that one of my students is a real guido -- likes to hit on girls, dates a LOT, is a real flirt. you know, guido -- greasy dude with his old beat-up car with the loud clanky engine, hanging out the window smelling really strongly of cologne and saying "eh babee, you lookin' really fine" with the little upward nod and sly smile. i guess a player, is all. my question is, do girls really fall for that? sure, they're hot and they know what to say. but i don't know, that used to be a total turnoff for me. i guess i always fell for the quiet geeks. ;)

graduation

my school's graduation was yesterday. it was probably over 90 degrees and crazy humid and my kids were in black satin and velvet dresses, and i was in my black scholarly robe type thing. oh, and did i mention that the ceremony was outside? i think i have to say that sitting and sweating is one of my least favorite activities EVER. i suppose it was a blessing in disguise, as they sped through that ceremony in an hour and a half. SERIOUSLY shorter than normal, but still.

at least the guest speaker's speech was great -- we had the treasurer of the united states speak at our graduation (LOVE living near dc), and she was a mexican american who spoke of how you really could do anything -- she expected to harvest fruit all her life and somehow, through working hard and being piss smart, wound up as treasurer. that was pretty amazing.

usually i get very grandmothery and feklempt at these ceremonies, but i think the frequency with which i attend such events have started to render me immune. it really *does* start to sound all cliched after a while. the valedictorian's speech was sort of to that effect, too -- how not all graduation cliches are true, like how you didn't really learn everything in kindergarten, how there really are such things as stupid questions -- all sort of true, but it's not really the sort of uplifting message you're supposed to get at a graduation ceremony. i can't decide if i appreciate the honesty or wish we could continue on with the sugared encouragements.

this video always makes me feklempt cause it addresses my college graduation year, the class of 1999. i can distinctly remember being in the front seat on the top of a double decker bus, somewhere between vienna and prague, listening to this song on european choir tour the three weeks after college. and bawling my eyes out. i think it was the only time i really grieved the loss of college days. those really were the best days of my life (so far).

cultural celebrations

every teacher lets their kids throw an end of the year party. well, most do. there are so many things about "THAT music teacher" that i never want to be, you know? the ones who throw fits when the music is not coming together and locks themselves into their office; the ones who show movies after concerts and in the weeks leading up to the end of the school year; the ones who let the kids throw ridiculous parties -- but shoot. i have to admit, i've done those things. girl, you get TIRED by the end of the school year; after a while you need a break too.

so. i don't let my kids throw "parties," per se -- instead, we have "cultural celebrations," which involve celebrating our different backgrounds by bringing different foods that represent our culture. a bit of a load of crap, but it makes me feel a little more like an educator when kids throw parties. it actually worked once, in my middle school teaching days -- one kid brought a crock pot with tortillas warming and brought all the fixins, one kid brought plantain chips like the ones he ate in ghana, one made irish lace cookies and brought a step dancing video. but normally, cultural celebrations involve some kid baking brownies, and others bringing chips and soda.

so i ask my men's choir -- what shall you bring to the cultural celebration? and they get all fancy (boys take their food seriously) -- they say, i'll bring cups and napkins, i'll bring donuts and bagels, i'll bring strawberries. well, I'LL bring crepes, i'll bring a cake, i'll bring ice cream, and then my kid rollo (who can be a totally different post) says, oh, i can bring fondue. and i get all excited -- oh really? and we eventually leave the subject with all people excited about the amount of food that has been promised to bring. to be fair, i was pretty skeptical -- we had done this once before and most everyone forgot and then we were left with two bags of chips and one bag of soda to feed 16 teenage boys, which DOESN'T.

the day of the celebration, my guys come through -- bag of bagels, two boxes of donuts, strawberries, chips, bottles of soda. even my ditzy freshman who waltzes into class 20 minutes late because he "was in the bathroom" came through with the ice cream. but then rollo walks in, two large bags in hand. he pulls out -- pause for effect -- a MINI-STOVE with TWO burner eyes, and plugs it in. then he pulls out his -- pause -- DOUBLE BOILER!!! -- and starts melting chocolate and heavy cream with the ORANGE PEEL he brought. then. THEN! he pulls out a bottle of vegetable oil and puts it in another pot, which he sets on the second burner for a meat fondue. THEN he pulls out his bags of MARINATED chicken, beef, and shrimp. rollo came through with the fondue. oh my god.

okay, SURELY this is illegal. i'm even on the FAC (faculty advisory council), for god's sake, i really should be more of an upstanding citizen in my professional community. but ohmahgawd, i loveloveLOVE fondue. i'm COMPLETELY thrilled -- THRILLED -- at all the trouble he went through, and express my excitement in a manner akin to my college days (which, depressingly, is a level of emotion that i attain far less frequently these days), which my guys get a kick out of -- yet i am completely TERRIFIED that some administrator will walk in and smell the electronic burning smell of the mini-stove. those are two emotions that have difficulty co-existing inside someone.

but how can you stop the fondue? so it went on. we had chosen a two hour extended testing block (normally classes are 90 minutes, but they alter the schedule at the end of the year to accommodate SOLs) for our celebration, and thus could enjoy fondue for a full two hours. at the end of class i said to my guys, "let's never speak of this again, okay?"

that was the best men's choir class EVER.

jibbity

i like to have an all-purpose word, something that describes any number of inanimate objects. i guess it's my version of the word "thing." in the past, i've used "thingamabob," which morphed into "doo-bobby," and then "jibby" came from "thingamajig." my current vocabulary word is "jibbity." let me give you some examples of conversations i have in my classroom using this word.

s: "mrs. woods, can i borrow a pencil?"
mw: "sure, there are a couple in the jibbity (cup) on the piano."

s: "mrs. woods, what does that marking mean?"
mw: "see that jibbity (crescendo) on the bottom of the page, that looks like a neernt-wernt (and yes, i do actually make that sound)? that means you should get louder and then softer."

thank GOD my students understand me. how unclear an educator could i possibly be?

4/20

so tomorrow is my birthday, april 20th. in my first year of teaching, i remember my students asking me, "ms. marbella, when is your birthday?" i told them, and they were like, "huh huh, huh huh -- 4/20." and me, in all my infinite innocence, replied "why, children, why does it matter so?" because i was teaching right outside of boulder, colorado, which is most likely the marijuana capital of AMERICA. (for those of you who are *still* blessedly green, 4-20 is the police code for a drug bust or something. april 20 is a popular day to smoke up to honor this code. brillant, right? :P) what a day to be born. i share my birthday with hitler, luther vandross, and the most popular day of the year to get high. sigh.

so in a scant hour i will be 30. i actually glanced at my reflection in the car window today as i was unlocking the door and thought to myself, "this is what your 30 year old face looks like." i freaked out a bunch about hitting the big 3-0 last year, and now that it's here, i guess i can deal with it. you're supposed to try and age gracefully, right? i guess i take solace in the fact that you're only as old as you feel (i guess that's not a fact, it's a belief, but whatever), and that i surround myself with people every day who will likely prevent me from ever feeling old.

here are the two best birthday serenades i ever received:
1) senior year of college, right after a wren singers recording session in the wren chapel. or maybe it was right after a concert, i don't remember. anyway, they realized, oh hey, it's margie's birthday, and broke out into song -- except when a small chamber group breaks out into happy birthday, they harmonize like crazy and ended up with a like, 8-10 part chord at the end. it was BEAUTEMOUS. too bad we didn't record it.
2) my first year of teaching, doug, my band teacher, sent over his percussion class to sing happy birthday to me. they all had different instruments -- claves, cabasa, ratchet -- and would sing a phrase and then bang on their instrument. "happy birthday to you" -- BANG! BANG! BANG!!! i was ridiculously pleased with this.


my favoritest birthday card to send

does god have a sense of humor?

my sister, my husband, and i went to san diego over easter weekend to visit my parents. catholics at easter time, as you can imagine, go to church a dang lot in the days leading up to easter sunday. (or maybe you can't imagine, because maybe you don't understand the whole easter mystery stuff, blah blah blah. suffice to say, there is a lot of church-going going on.) anyway. so we're at the good friday service which (totally didn't know this, but) centers around the Seven Last Words of Christ -- or, the seven last things he said before he died on the cross. so, this mass on good friday isn't your typical mass: readings, homily, communion, etc. THIS mass is just going to be a series of people reflecting on these seven last words and how they apply to their lives today. okay. i can appreciate the message; i can appreciate how they are trying to keep it "real" and keep the message for "today's" catholic and all that. so, the people all say their thing, okay, it's pretty okay. and that's it; that's the whole service BUT they have to end with music. every church gathering is not complete without music, right? so this duo, these older men (who were totally gay) playing electric acoustic guitar and keyboard, start singing their final song. "the seven last words of christ...before he made the fin-al SACrifice..." it's something akin to a chicago or a jefferson starship song, and they are SO into it, and they've got the fake strings (violins and the whole nine yards) playing with the electronic keyboard, and they are singing like it's the American Idol finals, and it is cheeseTASTIC. and. it. is. SOOO. hard. to keep from BUSTING out laughing. i am VERY studiously looking down at my hymnal to avoid eye contact with my husband, because we are grown adults and are surely beyond laughing in church.

and i think to myself, does god think this is funny? like, if god were a friend that i could call when i got home, could i say, "OMG, god, they had this TERRIBLE music at church today," and when i told him about it, would he pee his pants laughing, or would he just shake his head disapprovingly? i really hope he'd think it's funny. now, okay, those guys were feeling it, man, they were giving their all in god's name. so maybe in their fervor they didn't realize they were a little bit ridiculous. i guess you can't laugh at someone who's totally idolizing you, so maybe god wouldn't laugh after all. i'm actually reading this book by christopher moore right now called "lamb: the gospel according to biff, christ's childhood pal." and it's the story of jesus christ as a kid and teenager, and it shows him as just those things -- just a kid, just a teenager, before he becomes the Redeemer, and the Christ. it's funny, and interesting. interesting point of view.

i bet joshua (as they called j.c. in the book) would think those guys were funny.

i'm not jewish

i don't curse in my classroom. i really could -- no one would care, what you hear on tv is far worse than anything i could say -- but i wish to hold myself to a standard, so i make an effort to watch my language, and i expect my students to do the same. something i say all the time INSTEAD of cursing is "oy vey." one time i was leaving the band teacher's office, muttering under my breath about the conversation we just had. "oy VEY!" i say to myself as i walk out. i hear a band kid say, to a friend, "is mrs. woods jewish?" humorous, considering i'm asian.


mike myers -- he's like butta.

educational vocation

i've been teaching for six years now (gawd), and i remember my choral mus. ed. professor telling me right before i started -- start a journal of your experiences, because it'll be something to look back on that will make you smile when you're having a tough day. boy, there were tough days my first few years of teaching. but the fun days were really ones to remember. i will try to recount the really good ones in later blogs. and that's the purpose of this thing -- to record the crazy things that happen in my classroom every day.

i teach at a very culturally diverse high school in metropolitan washington dc. they are really not kidding when they say that it's important to find a school that's a good fit for you -- your personality, your work habits, etc. it's taken three tries to get it right -- but while things drive me crazy on a regular basis, on the whole i'm amazingly happy to be there. and how many people can say that -- that they are thrilled to be in their workplace?

i sort of feel like teaching is a calling -- sort of like a religious order. i think there are a lot of things that i could be good at, but i've always wanted to do something with my life that served others (cheesy sitcom lesson music, but i'm really serious). teaching is something that i feel takes a LOT LOT! out of me, but i get so much out of it and it does so much for me -- that it's a fair trade.

quick story, an old but classic one. so i teach at a culturally diverse school, and my classes are usually very mixed. the kids at this school are really used to this, and will tease each other with ethnic slurs. when i first got to this school, it really shocked me -- this kind of language surely starts gang wars in other schools! but even though it took me a while to be okay with it, i really do think it's all in good fun, and that the students really aren't that offended -- which is amazing considering the amount of racial tension that exists elsewhere. (my nagging guilt in the back of my head says i really should quelch it, but damn, sometimes it is just too funny.) so, one day i send my kids out in sectional rehearsals -- you put the sopranos in one room, the altos in another, etc. so they can concentrate on hearing their part. and during this sectional, we had a power outage. now, 12 high school boys in a small dark room is nothing but trouble. of course someone tries to hold the door shut so no one can get out, and you hear all sorts of scuffling. so i yelled, and eventually got them all out, and one of my hispanic kids says, "oh my god mrs. woods, when the lights when out i said, 'where's chaya?' -- one of the black kids in my classroom. "i couldn't see him when the lights when out!"

one of my pet peeves about my students is when they come into my classroom and say, "what are we going to do today?" i usually answer with, "oh, i don't know. SING???" dorks. but i love 'em.

the meaning of the blog

apparently, i don't make sense to people sometimes. i was teaching in a middle school classroom a few weeks back and the kids kept asking me, "what does that mean?" my vernacular has developed - nay, morphed - to the point where people need a special dictionary to understand me. it reminded me of a time in boulder, co, when i was trying to explain something to my friends betsy and steve. and i used a lot of words like "thingie" and "whatchamabobberdoo," and at the end of it all, betsy is nodding and steve is perplexed. "you understood that?" steve asks. "yeah," betsy says, "i speak margie." it kind of bums me out, because i think that i'm a fabulous communicator, but i guess that's really not the case.