Friday night was our final choir concert of the year. There's a tradition I stumbled into at this school where the choirs put on a Pops Concert, serving the sole purpose of letting the kids get on stage and sing their carefully chosen solo songs of saying goodbye and moving on... nothing very artistic about it. But it is my most "logistically stimulating" event we do; it takes me quite a while to plan who will be where, when, which spotlights we need, how to get a steel drum player, where to find a choreographer so the completely dancing inept choir director doesn't have to do it, get a recording technician and a sound engineer without needing to pay anyone... the list goes on. There are 20o little pieces to the puzzle to get together in the weeks leading up. And that's to say nothing of getting the graduating class roses and certificates signed by a principal, hang posters, publicize over announcements, audition, and keep everyone's attention all the way up to the senior's last day of school.
I finally had it semi-figured out and ready for our 4:30 call time Friday night. Suddenly, without warning, a hurricane sweeps through Gambrills, MD (ok, not literally, but i swear it was close) and knocks out the power. Not to worry, it comes back on minutes later. Everywhere except the auditorium.
It's one of those moments of realization when you decide the only thing to do is be okay with what's going on, laugh about it, and try to calm everyone down. I'm a big advocate of skipping over the worrying stage completely and going right to the "so what do we do about this NOW?" stage. Slowly the students start figuring out what a concert without power means; very quiet solos, no CD tracks, no guitar amps, no lights... not quite the CELEBRATION OF THE YEAR event they'd envisioned. Every 20 minutes or so I would update them on the progress we were making, which really wasn't much. I'd go back to my office and call the county maintenance, i harassed the custodial staff, I brainstormed with my good friend Patrick who was there to accompany us, i called the best tech geek i know, ;) i even almost went and bought a generator... any possible solution i could come up with. Mostly I'd pray. 1) that the rain would go back to a normal thunderstorm level instead of torrential downpour, 2) that the fire alarm would stop going off every 5 minutes and 3) that i'd have some burst of inspiration to let me know how on earth to make this thing run. Then i'd go back to my students and be all excited about the prospect of doing a concert like never done before, telling them that this was the epitome of flexibility i'd been trying to teach them all year :) I really felt bad, i thought we'd have to cancel the program. 6:00 rolls around and we finally get enough extension cords to run a very little amount of electricity from the hall outside down the aisle of the auditorium and up to one small amp and one small cd player. The kids about flipped, they were SO excited they could scream into a microphone. We could plug in one guitar OR one mic at a time and the soloists had to be on the very edge of the stage opposite where the piano was. There were no lights on stage so we just turned on the house lights and illuminated the audience enough that they could vaguely see what was going on.
My original plan to "set up" from 2:00-3:30 and then get a bite to eat turned into heavy lifting followed by heavy breathing from 2:00-6:30. In another attempt to get everyone excited I turned my phone on speaker phone to let them all hear my brother Brian read his mission call- he's going to the Kenya, Nairobi mission!!! He leaves October 8, 2009. Most of them had no idea what was going on but they saw me totally freaking out so they all cheered for him and made a big deal out of it. Funny.
My favorite part of setting up: Just when you think it's 6:30 and everyone should have a clue about where to be for show time, they don't. Just when you think people would have the common sense to know what you can be bothered with minutes before a production and which can wait, they totally don't.
(student )"Ms. Clark, what are we doing on Monday?"
(student) "Ms. Clark, does my hair look okay?"
(student) "Ms. Clark, where am i supposed to stand for this concert?"
(parent) "Should I sit in the 3rd row?"
(student) "I think i might have to drop out."
The best one though, is that 4 boys walk up to me in grungy boxer shorts and socks. They nonchalantly remind me that days ago in a moment of stupidity I'd agreed to let 4 of my guys run out on stage in socks and PJs with sunglasses and air guitars- the picturesque rock and roll commercial. I don't even study out the prospects of this, i just shoo them back stage to get in positions. It wasn't until a colleague of mine told me how brave I was to let them run on in their underwear that I realized what was about to happen... I ran back there and scared them pretty good into not even THINKING of letting anything happen that would get me fired.
So, with nothing to go on but faith and adrenaline (the latter being noticeably stronger at this point) we started letting people in. I explained they'd probably want to move up really close to the stage and get buddy-buddy with the people around them because of circumstances of the night. And we were off! I had a smile permanently glued on my face from beginning to end. Sure, it served the dual purpose of giving off the impression that everything was going according to plan, but it was mostly genuine. We had fun. It was a high energy audience who knew the sacrifice it was to put it on this way, we had some killer choreography and a really really good size audience. We had jazz, country, R&B, rock, musical theatre, Disney, you name it. We sang "For Good," "Bohemian Rhapsody," "Hail Holy Queen," Taylor Swift, some hip hop people I don't know but the kids LOVED... oh we just had it all. Needless to say I think the kids were pleased with it when it was all said and done.
I looked around the stage at one point- 70 kids standing in the dark, doing the hula with leis around their necks and singing the cheesiest version of "Kokomo" you can imagine, pointing to the sky or their mom or the back corner on "That's where we wanna go." We had Sergeant Miller from the Marine Corp pounding away on the drums, Elementary School teacher keeping up with me on piano, Social Studies teacher strumming away on the guitar, parents taking care of concessions and intermission and money handling, a band parent dealing with all the sound issues, switching in CDS manually from a tiny little boombox at the front of the stage. All these people coming together and having a blast making music and entertaining their friends and family for a night. I felt so blessed to have this much help from so many random places. It was unreal.
The moral of my story is this:
I saw a miracle take place in my little corner of the dairy farm world last week. Shouldn't have turned out like it did. In a conversation following the concert I was told I just sounded like I was grinning from ear to ear. It's true, you can't help it when you've witnessed a small miracle.
School's out in 2 weeks. Can't wait for all the pending adrenaline rushes. Work with the youth, they're bound to happen.
I finally had it semi-figured out and ready for our 4:30 call time Friday night. Suddenly, without warning, a hurricane sweeps through Gambrills, MD (ok, not literally, but i swear it was close) and knocks out the power. Not to worry, it comes back on minutes later. Everywhere except the auditorium.
It's one of those moments of realization when you decide the only thing to do is be okay with what's going on, laugh about it, and try to calm everyone down. I'm a big advocate of skipping over the worrying stage completely and going right to the "so what do we do about this NOW?" stage. Slowly the students start figuring out what a concert without power means; very quiet solos, no CD tracks, no guitar amps, no lights... not quite the CELEBRATION OF THE YEAR event they'd envisioned. Every 20 minutes or so I would update them on the progress we were making, which really wasn't much. I'd go back to my office and call the county maintenance, i harassed the custodial staff, I brainstormed with my good friend Patrick who was there to accompany us, i called the best tech geek i know, ;) i even almost went and bought a generator... any possible solution i could come up with. Mostly I'd pray. 1) that the rain would go back to a normal thunderstorm level instead of torrential downpour, 2) that the fire alarm would stop going off every 5 minutes and 3) that i'd have some burst of inspiration to let me know how on earth to make this thing run. Then i'd go back to my students and be all excited about the prospect of doing a concert like never done before, telling them that this was the epitome of flexibility i'd been trying to teach them all year :) I really felt bad, i thought we'd have to cancel the program. 6:00 rolls around and we finally get enough extension cords to run a very little amount of electricity from the hall outside down the aisle of the auditorium and up to one small amp and one small cd player. The kids about flipped, they were SO excited they could scream into a microphone. We could plug in one guitar OR one mic at a time and the soloists had to be on the very edge of the stage opposite where the piano was. There were no lights on stage so we just turned on the house lights and illuminated the audience enough that they could vaguely see what was going on.
My original plan to "set up" from 2:00-3:30 and then get a bite to eat turned into heavy lifting followed by heavy breathing from 2:00-6:30. In another attempt to get everyone excited I turned my phone on speaker phone to let them all hear my brother Brian read his mission call- he's going to the Kenya, Nairobi mission!!! He leaves October 8, 2009. Most of them had no idea what was going on but they saw me totally freaking out so they all cheered for him and made a big deal out of it. Funny.
My favorite part of setting up: Just when you think it's 6:30 and everyone should have a clue about where to be for show time, they don't. Just when you think people would have the common sense to know what you can be bothered with minutes before a production and which can wait, they totally don't.
(student )"Ms. Clark, what are we doing on Monday?"
(student) "Ms. Clark, does my hair look okay?"
(student) "Ms. Clark, where am i supposed to stand for this concert?"
(parent) "Should I sit in the 3rd row?"
(student) "I think i might have to drop out."
The best one though, is that 4 boys walk up to me in grungy boxer shorts and socks. They nonchalantly remind me that days ago in a moment of stupidity I'd agreed to let 4 of my guys run out on stage in socks and PJs with sunglasses and air guitars- the picturesque rock and roll commercial. I don't even study out the prospects of this, i just shoo them back stage to get in positions. It wasn't until a colleague of mine told me how brave I was to let them run on in their underwear that I realized what was about to happen... I ran back there and scared them pretty good into not even THINKING of letting anything happen that would get me fired.
So, with nothing to go on but faith and adrenaline (the latter being noticeably stronger at this point) we started letting people in. I explained they'd probably want to move up really close to the stage and get buddy-buddy with the people around them because of circumstances of the night. And we were off! I had a smile permanently glued on my face from beginning to end. Sure, it served the dual purpose of giving off the impression that everything was going according to plan, but it was mostly genuine. We had fun. It was a high energy audience who knew the sacrifice it was to put it on this way, we had some killer choreography and a really really good size audience. We had jazz, country, R&B, rock, musical theatre, Disney, you name it. We sang "For Good," "Bohemian Rhapsody," "Hail Holy Queen," Taylor Swift, some hip hop people I don't know but the kids LOVED... oh we just had it all. Needless to say I think the kids were pleased with it when it was all said and done.
I looked around the stage at one point- 70 kids standing in the dark, doing the hula with leis around their necks and singing the cheesiest version of "Kokomo" you can imagine, pointing to the sky or their mom or the back corner on "That's where we wanna go." We had Sergeant Miller from the Marine Corp pounding away on the drums, Elementary School teacher keeping up with me on piano, Social Studies teacher strumming away on the guitar, parents taking care of concessions and intermission and money handling, a band parent dealing with all the sound issues, switching in CDS manually from a tiny little boombox at the front of the stage. All these people coming together and having a blast making music and entertaining their friends and family for a night. I felt so blessed to have this much help from so many random places. It was unreal.
The moral of my story is this:
I saw a miracle take place in my little corner of the dairy farm world last week. Shouldn't have turned out like it did. In a conversation following the concert I was told I just sounded like I was grinning from ear to ear. It's true, you can't help it when you've witnessed a small miracle.
School's out in 2 weeks. Can't wait for all the pending adrenaline rushes. Work with the youth, they're bound to happen.
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All I can say is...YOU GO GIRL!! It takes a special person to put up with that kind of stress and you did it with Flying Colors! Staci called me and told be about Brian's call. That is so GREAT! She also told me what you were dealing with. YiKeS! Looks like it was wonderful.
Oh Nikko...nobody can do what you do, that's all there is to it. You are the epitomy of FLEXABILITY! I'm just so proud.
Ms. Clark...OH.MY.WORD! Truly that is what life is all about. Overcoming challenges. At girls camp that is all we'd hear about is remember when it....The high school students at Arundel will never forget the Pops Concert of
'09. I think it's safe to say they'll never forget Ms. Clark either. I love the picture! I MISS THOSE KIDS!
holy whoa...i totally thought i was there while i was reading that... seriously, nice story telling! You rock dude, and im so happy for brian. You looked beautiful as always and you do handle stress well. We all know that if that was me, I probably would have started laughing really hard and frozen in my tracks... then tears would come and I would say random things that dont make sense, and then faint.