The music ensemble trip. Almost every program has one. In high school, every 4 years the choir/band/orchestra takes a big trip, where they do a few token performances to justify the trip and reward the kids for being (or bribe the kids into staying) in the program. In Ohio, the biggie is Disney. Lots of groups plan every 4th year of their program around going to Disney. At school #1, I walked into a show choir program that was due for a trip to Disney that spring.
When I accepted the position, I was informed of the impending trip by Principal Hugs-A-Lot* **. I was also informed that the school board had resolved that there would be NO overnight student trips this year. By any group. For any purpose. He was also quick to inform me that the previous director (henceforth known as The Church Lady, as she was a pastor’s wife (and some parents didn’t appreciate her attempts to endoctrinate the choir into her religious beliefs)) knew this and had communicated it to the Boosters, the students and the parents, so if I chose to speak with them about it, it shouldn’t come as a surprise.
I learned from a few colleagues that the board resolution had been made last spring, after: 1) a student from the National Honor Society had taken a fake ID on an NHS trip to NYC and while there, snuck off from the group and got a tattoo with the fake ID (irony: this student was the son of a long-time teacher and the principal from my home elementary school. She thought quite highly of herself and always played favorites there, so it was no surprise to me that she blamed the entire debacle on the NHS advisor, expected her son to have no consequences for his actions, etc…); and 2) a hotel room of high school girls on a choir-related trip had flipped on their TV to discover that the hotel hadn’t blocked the, ahem, adult channels on their TV, as requested by the chaperones. Rather than simply tell the girls to turn off the TV, deal with the front desk until the inappropriate channels were blocked and let the girls know when it was safe to resume channel surfing, The Church Lady joined the students in their room, looked at what was on the TV with them and decided to talk with them about what they had seen. Needless to say, there were parents who weren’t happy with the way this situation was handled. (This information came to me from students and parents of students who were involved. Principal Hugs-A-Lot later admitted that there had been a TV misunderstanding with a previous choir trip.)
So at my first Booster meeting, when the subject of the trip was raised, I made a comment about ‘as you know, the board has resolved that there wouldn’t be any overnight trips this year’ and recommended we move to the next topic.
The horrified looks on their faces told me that they did NOT know. They didn’t know anything about it at all.
One of the mothers haughtily said that I was misinformed, because the band was planning their every-other-year trip to Indianapolis for the Band of America competition currently. How could there be a board resolution banning overnight trips for that school year if the band was going on one?
I had no answer but the truth: I’m not part of the band leadership, so I have no knowledge of what they are planning. I only know what Principal Hugs-A-Lot told me, which is: no trips.
So, immediately, my Boosters think I’m:
a) misinformed
b) so much of a jerk that I would cancel a trip for my students because I don’t want to do the work
c) lying about b)
d) lying about a) to play along with an administration who doesn’t want to deal with more trip drama
e) all of the above
I’ll let you guess which one hit the party line later that night.
After another, much nicer, band & choir mom confirmed that the band was currently planning this trip, I promised that I would look into this matter and get the kids their trip if there was any way to do so. I had no plans or desires to start my year, let alone my career, being the woman who killed the Disney trip. That certainly wouldn’t earn me any good will from these kids, or their parents.
Principal Hugs-A-Lot held to the letter of the law with me – no trips; out of his hands; nothing any of us could do. He even told the band director he was out of line for planning such a trip, knowing about the ban for the year and to stop promoting the trip to the kids. When the band parents got ahold of this information, 60-some of them showed up at the next board meeting and threatened to vote all board members who were up for re-election OUT if they didn’t let their kids go to Indy. Somehow, an exception was made for the band.
My Booster parents (though much smaller in number) offered to approach the board in a much more civil fashion and request an exception be made for the choir, too. They were not allowed to approach the board, and Principal Hugs-A-Lot strongly implied that I would face consequences if the Choir Boosters showed up to a board meeting unannounced.
Worse than all of that, I had to confirm to the kids that the trip had been cancelled and the school board would not allow them to go. I would like to say that the reactions ranged from disappointed to pissed, but there were a lot more on the pissed end of the continuum. Naturally, the kids who were only doing show choir for the trip quit or stayed and tried to make my life a living hell until I kicked them out (which I ended up doing throughout the year for reasons like safety, the productivity of the group, my sanity…). At one point, mid-year, I actually told them that it might have been a good thing the board banned overnight trips, because I would not reward a group who acted as disrespectful as they did with a trip and I certainly wouldn’t want people thinking that I was their director.
Hindsight: Probably wasn’t necessary to say, but still 100% true. That group dynamic was TERRIBLE. The Church Lady had kindly auditioned and chosen the group for me before I was even hired. Some of these kids were truly the wrong element and should have never been there; they dragged the good ones down to their level with experience. That comment caused a few more to drop and the dynamic improved.
Downside: the Powers That Be started getting complaints that the show choir was getting smaller at every performance and why was that new girl killing their show choir?
Actuality: Every time I dismissed a student from show choir, it was because they had been in repeated violation of the conduct agreement they all signed at the beginning of the year: things like multiple unexcused absences from practice, disrespect to other students or me, physically harming other students, skipping performances… The incidents had all been documented and the administration had been copied on all the correspondence when the students were asked not to return.
Unsurprisingly, I found out later that the administration was bad-mouthing me to the parents who came in to appeal their child’s removal from the show choir, saying I had unrealistic expectations, that I was inexperienced and that I was aggressively trying to prove I was up to the job.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, parents also went to the administration about the trip without telling me. The administration didn’t tell me they were having meetings about my program either. Parents were coming out of these private administration meetings and telling anyone who would listen that Principal Hugs-A-Lot told them the real reason they wouldn’t let the show choir go on a trip was because I was so young and inexperienced and they didn’t want the trip to go badly.
Do you hear that horn? Off in the distance? Yup, that’s the bus that Principal Hugs-A-Lot was throwing me under… and strangely enough, driving at the same time.
I’ll let you guess how long it took that tidbit of gossip to become widely accepted truth among my quickly dwindling parent-support base. (Eventually, my Booster President told me this in confidence, as she had heard it from several families. Throughout my years at school #1, other parents with firsthand knowledge of these meetings confirmed the same.)
I’m the woman who kept the show choir from the happiest place on Earth.
*all names have been changed, regardless of whether they deserve the protection of the innocent; the purpose of this blog isn’t to slander anyone, but to be truthful about how they treated me. If you know these people, you will know to whom I refer. If you don’t, just laugh and follow along.
**The origin of this pseudonym will be revealed later. Promise.
Donita Westman 