#9 – Inconceivable

School #1 – first year
While administering a quiz one morning, one of my quickest students walked up to me with her completed quiz.  We had already taken a pre-test and a few other quick quizzes to see where this class was in their basic music literacy, so the kids were used to my quiz behavior expectations and were quietly plugging away.

Knowing that she was the first one done, the sophomore sat down next to me in the open chair at my work table and whispers, “It’s nice to be able to finish a quiz in choir in peace.  I haven’t done that in a while.  Thanks – I didn’t know what that was like.”

The following played out all in whispers while the other students finished their quizzes, and pausing when someone approached the table to hand one in; she obviously meant this for my ears only.

D: “Finish a quiz in peace?”
s: “Yeah”
D: “What do you mean?  Was there a concern of cheating or something?”
s: “No. [Church Lady] always wanted to use me as her therapist.”
D: (shocked look) “About what?”
s: “Oh, her life, her husband, their sex life, how she wanted a baby, but they couldn’t get pregnant…”
D: (eyes wider) “what?  How would that have come up?”
s: “I didn’t ask, she just felt compelled to tell me way too much about her life.  I just wanted to finish my quiz, not hear about her fertility…”
D: “Did you tell her that?”
s: “Not at first.  I would just sit there, and she would go on and on and then thank me for being such a good listener.  I would try to forget everything I had just heard and finish my quiz.”
D: “Did you let her know it was uncomfortable?  That’s completely inappropriate, and I know you know that.”
s: “Oh, eventually, one day she was going on and on about how they couldn’t get pregnant and all she wanted was a baby.  I looked her straight in the eye and said, “well, how do you expect to get pregnant if he’s putting it in your butt all the time?  That’s not how that works.” “
D: (eyes the size of saucers, takes a beat to regain composure) “How did she respond?”
s: “She looked all upset – I think I made her cry – but she stopped talking to me about all that stuff after that.”
D: “Are you serious? You actually said that?”
s: “What? It’s not like it wasn’t true.  I passed 8th grade health.  And if she hadn’t given all that TMI, I wouldn’t have said it back to her.”
D: “Wow.  That’s awkward.  But I’m glad she stopped talking to you about that stuff after that.”
s: “She actually kind of hated me after that, but I didn’t mind, because I didn’t have to hear about her butt sex anymore. I was glad when she announced she was leaving.”
D: “Well… I can guarantee this is the last conversation we will ever have about it, if that’s any consolation?”
s: “Yeah, I figured.  You’re actually an adult.  That’s why I told you.  People act like she was some saint.  I don’t think so and neither does my mom.”
D: “You told your mom?”
s: “Yeah, the day I told her she was doing it wrong if she was expecting to get pregnant. [Mom] was proud of me for knowing more about how babies were made than my teacher and told me that if The Church Lady ever said anything like that to me again, she’d come up to the school and raise hell.”
D: “Okay, just as long as your mom knows.”

O.o

Seriously, I can’t make this up.  And there was no lie in this young lady’s eyes either.  This young lady was a student for several years and I could always tell when she was hiding something from me.  This was 100% true.

Irony: This conversation happened the same year I was told that I needed to show the students I care about them more, to get them on my side.  You know, ‘they won’t care how much you know until they know how much you care’?  So I spent that whole first year trying to get to know them, while holding them to expectations of behavior.  It was hard and I was accused of being schizo more than once because I would pause a conversation where I was trying to teach/bond with a group of students to correct another student’s behavior.  When I returned to the conversation with the students who were behaving appropriately, I wouldn’t act mad at them.  They expected to get yelled at, too; or for me to at least fume.  I asked them, ‘why would I act mad at you?  You didn’t do anything to make me mad.’ and this confused them.  Apparently, teachers took their anger out on everyone all the time, from the students’ perspective.  By the end of the year, they had started to get this strangely logical MO and we had gotten to know each other well enough we could joke around and then get back on task, like all students need to do when you’re pushing them hard.  I pushed my kids in rehearsals; that was my job.  But when something funny happened, I shared that laugh with them.  That’s human.

On my first evaluation from year 2, with Principal Fuhrer, I got docked for being too close with my students.  Yup, you read that right.  Because I tried to relate to them, cut them some slack when they had a bad day, teased with them when they said something silly, let them tease me when I turned a page too hard and threw my music off of the piano or we had some other catastrophic fail during rehearsal, I was inappropriately close with my students.

I wasn’t the one who brought up butt sex, or hugged shirtless teenage boys when they popped into the choir room after sports practice (I saw that with my own eyes), or shopped at Victoria’s Secret and gave female students also shopping there advice on which thongs were the most comfortable (some of the male students asked me if I shopped there and wore thongs from there, because that’s what choir directors do – ??? – yeah, her thongs used to hang out of her pants all the time! – ‘You don’t need to ask any questions about undergarments ever again.  That’s inappropriate. Besides, why do you want to know? Really?’), but you know, sure… put in my file that I don’t have appropriate boundaries with my students. Seems fair.