Who says real life isn't like TV?

I watch Glee. In fact, I love Glee. This is odd, because as a non-singing, non-dancing theatre person and drama teacher, I LOATHE musicals. But Glee is awesome. SO, nyah.

I directed my first school play earlier this month, and it was an amazing experience I want to repeat, but not any time in teh very immediate future. Next fall is better, haha.

Anyway, I had a large cast: 19 kids. 3 non-speaking parts, 3 tiny parts, the rest had several to plenty of lines. Ambitious, I know. Lesson learned. I teach in a school with about 115 kids from 8th to 12th grade. The coolest part of teaching in a small school? Everyone is involved in everything. The worst part of teaching in a small school? Everyone is involved in everything. I worked out time shares with the basketball, cheerleading, volleyball, and dance team coaches, as well as had to deal with the wrestling, volleyball, cross country, dance team, cheerleading, and basketball practice and game schedules, as well as work in the bowling team meets, which outweighed all of that, because that's my other after-school commitment, haha.Oh, and I had a student who attends our school half day and a creative arts school in the afternoon. WHEW. As you can see, I had athletic, popular, theatre, and artsy kids, as well as student council kids and kids who had never done anything like this before to juggle. As we all know from movies and TV shows, the jocks and the artsy kids and the student council kids and all of that never overlap in larger schools, and, well, the same is actually true in small schools, too.

We did a modern-language one-act adaptation of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" by Shakespeare, chosen because I also had to teach the real story in my sophomore English class this quarter. As usual, I offered bonus points to my students who were in the play or worked back stage. Two girls decided that if they could get bonus points, then maybe they could put up with being in the play. Both are sophomores, both are cute, both are popular. Both played on the volleyball team, one is the head cheerleader. They made it pretty clear in the beginning that they just wanted bonus points. Being short on available students, I figured what the heck...holding bonus points over them would make them do it.

My Titania was an anime-loving, cos-playing theatre newbie. She is a senior who loves Spongebob, the Beatles, and wigs and is a really awesome kid. Trying out, then committing to the part is not something she would have done two years ago. In fact, if I hadn't harassed her every day for a month, she may not have joined, either. I think she did it to get me to leave her alone.

Titania, Moth, and Starveling (I didn't have enough boys available, so Starveling was my head cheerleader) normally have nothing to do with each other. One group is too cool for life, the other is happy just to be herself. Titania wanted to wear a wig as part of her costume. She debated between a pink and a blue for a while, then decided on the pink, then chickened out and went with a long, dark brown wig with a funky cut. (Good funky, not bad funky.) She brought a bag full of wigs, including one she was donating to the department to school one day. It was a half day, and I went to nuke my lunch. As I was walking out of the room, I heard one of the sophomores say in a derisive tone, "Why do you have so many wigs?" There was a glance between Moth and Starveling. I knew Titania would hold her own, so I let it be. My lunch finished heating, and I walked back to my room, only to find Titania, Moth, and Starveling all wearing wigs and laughing and giggling together. They ate lunch in their wigs. After lunch, they returned the wigs to Titania. I heard Moth say, "Man...I think I want wigs now. Those are fun!" Starveling echoed her sentiments saying, "I want to do this every day!" And Titania just smiled and said, "Now you get why I have them?" The other two looked sheepish and said, "Yeah."

I related this story to my husband that night, and he said, "You just had Glee in your classroom." I looked at him quizzically. "You had your head cheerleader, another girl who is popular, too, and both of them are jocks. Your Oberon and your Snout are both jocks. You have your creative arts school kid as Puck, your quiet 8th grade sweet girls, your student council officers, and your kids who aren't normally involved in anything, plus your wig-wearing anime girl, and they just learned to do something together, to appreciate something they previously scoffed at. It's just like Glee."

You wanna talk glee? I lived it for the next few days. Thank you, theatre, for giving kids a chance to see into each others' worlds and to learn to appreciate each other and to get along.

It's been almost 2 weeks since the play. Moth and Starveling are more tolerant of kids in their class. They smile at me in the halls and answer when I say hello. They're no longer too cool. I mean, they get frustrated sometimes, but I heard Moth stick up for a kid this morning while they were working on their exam projects, and she normally tormented that kid. Let's hope they keep some of this and use it.

And meet their kids, Radius and Ulna...

Before teaching Romeo and Juliet to my students, I always preface the unit with a lesson about the life of William Shakespeare. The quiz includes the question, "William's Shakespeare's wife: _____________"

The correct answer, of course, is "Anne Hathaway." (Yes, like the actress. No, she's not that old. Yes, more than one person can have the same name. Lunch is the same time as yesterday. Stop asking questions.) One year, while grading quizzes, one student had answered "ARM Hathaway."

I looked at this every way I could. Was I misreading it? Was her handwriting bad? No, this girl had a particularly neat handwriting. It wasn't blurred. The only possible conclusion was that she thought William Shakespeare's wife was, in fact, named after the upper limb of the human body.

I marked it wrong and continued grading, coming later to a quiz turned in by her friend, who sits nearby. She had the right answer, "Anne." But her penmanship was a little sloppier... a little messy... and if you squinted and looked at it from an angle (say, the angle of someone sitting in a nearby desk), you could possibly come to the conclusion that she had written "Arm" instead of "Anne."

This brings to mind the question of what is sadder, that this student felt the need to cheat on a quiz that was, in fact, open-notes, or the fact that she saw the word "Arm" and never questioned whether or not it would be a person's actual name.

And how did he get off the bottom of the ocean?

The following is a conversation heard as a ninth-grade English class watched the 1997 Baz Luhrmann version of Romeo and Juliet:

Student: (Randomly, after having watched approximately 75 percent of the film) Hey! That's him! That's that guy in Titanic.

Teacher: Yes, that's Leonardo DiCaprio.

Student: (Pondering.) How can he be in two movies?

(The room is more silent than any moment in the entire year, as even the dumb kids stare at her blankly.)