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.