Principal Fuhrer was a jerk. We’ve already established that (and will more later). He was also aggressive, passive-aggressive, and petty.
For my 3rd year at School #1, my assigned lunch time was 10:15 am.
– Wait. That sounds really early for high school lunch?
It was. In fact, it was so early that no one else ate during that time. No students, no other staff. In fact, of the 40+ staff members in the building, I was the only one who was scheduled to eat lunch outside of the normal lunch block (11:00-1:30), who didn’t request it that way. Usually, there were coaches who would request to have their lunch & planning time during 4th block (1:30-3:00) so they had time to get ready for their after-school practices or wouldn’t require a sub to cover their last class if they had to leave school early for a competition. No one was assigned to eat lunch while McDonald’s still served breakfast.
So, what was I doing during the 3-session lunch block? Teaching a select audition group that my students had begged administrative permission to form (some of whom were auditing the class and came down during their lunch to sing), teaching music appreciation & theory, and babysitting a study hall.
Yup, I was given a year’s worth of lunch detention to babysit a study hall.
I was told that I should view this as a privilege, because I was getting what I wanted, by trying to retain students in my choral program (an administrative directive, by the way) by offering a choir during the much more flexible lunch block scheduling. Trying to retain students who wanted to take choir, but systematically could NOT take choir because it conflicted with all of the junior-level & senior-level college prep & AP classes. Who built that master schedule that made it impossible for kids to take the classes they needed while still being allowed to engage in co-curricular activities they loved?* Who put the recruitment goal in my evaluation? You guessed it – Principal Fuhrer.
A note – a few of my nicer colleagues also noticed that I had been given lunch detention and asked me if I had requested this particular privilege. When I told them I had not, a couple went to Principal Fuhrer and offered to switch duties with me so that I could have ANY adult interaction (‘collaboration time’) during my school day, so I wouldn’t feel completely cut off from my peers. Principal Fuhrer flatly refused.
I’m nearly positive there was a reason that had nothing to do with needing that study hall covered. And a few of my more honest colleagues knew this and completely agreed, calling this out as the bullshit move that it was, including the Mr. Union President. He said, contractually, they were allowing me a lunch time and our contact didn’t specify that it had to be during the schedule’s lunch block; he then asked me what I did to piss Principal Fuhrer off. (As you might guess, I wasn’t the only one who saw Principal Fuhrer as the bully he really was.)
Back in the early 2000s, my state department of education gave educators 7 years from the completion of their undergrad degree to complete their master’s degree or you wouldn’t be allowed to renew your teaching license. Being as every master’s program I could find in music education (or education in general, for that matter) had a sequence that you had to follow and those classes were only offered the same term, every other year, there was no way that I could complete a master’s program in the allotted amount of time without taking 8-9 quarter hours in at least 2 successive spring quarters.
Winter/Spring quarter was also the same time where School #1 did their musical. There’s no way I could have passed 2 quarters of grad classes & co-directed a musical at the same time. It was suicide. Twice.
In order to keep my teaching license, I wouldn’t be able to help with 2 musicals. Because I had been researching my options during my first two years, I told Principal Fuhrer (as well as the Mr. Drama Director, such an appropriate double entendre that I don’t need a pseudonym for this man) at the end of year 2 that I wouldn’t be able to assist with the musicals for the next two years because of my grad program. I even submitted my proposed schedule from my graduate advisor as proof. I also volunteered to help as I was available and gave the kids permission to use my room for rehearsal whenever needed. I offered to give feedback on show selection, based on the voices that we had at the time or assist with casting. Not that any of that mattered. Mr. Drama Director & Principal Fuhrer (a former drama director himself) took it personally.
See why I suspect this lunch punishment was retaliation?
It was shitty coincidence that the first two years of musicals that I had done had been miserable for me. Mr. Drama Director was unreliable at best, unstable at worst, disorganized to a fault, and regularly left me holding the bag on things. He regularly disappeared during FULL tech rehearsals for an hour or more at a time, when he told me he had to step out to smoke a cigarette and would be back in 5 minutes. Over an hour later (usually 15-20 minutes before the rehearsal was scheduled to end), he would come strolling back in to ‘give notes’ and just expected me to keep the entire cast, crew & pit on task & safe, while I was conducting the pit and working with my sound crew. The drama department had always used the music department equipment as musicals were a ‘joint production’. AV equipment regularly went missing or was flat out ruined under his ‘supervision’; Mr. Drama would always promise that it would be replaced out of the drama budget after the ticket monies were collected; that never happened. My choir boosters paid to replace the equipment (read: using the money my choir kids earned during our fundraisers), as we had to have working AV for our concerts in the gym.
Kids would come to me regularly for outside help because they needed help with lines or scenes, because the notes that the director had given that didn’t make any sense and he couldn’t explain it, just kept telling them to fix it. More than once, I had LEADS come to me because less than a week before tech, they still didn’t have blocking for their scenes, because the director just kept skipping their scene and never remembered to go back to give them ANY direction. I was expected to do whatever it took to ‘help the kids be successful’, which I regularly did, without batting an eye.
Mr. Drama got us black-listed at a major musical theater rights company when he kept the entire set of rented performance materials in the trunk of his car for nearly 9 months after they had to be returned, including an entire summer vacation. At some point, he even lied to Principal Fuhrer (a gutsy move, I’ll give him that) and said that he had returned them and the rights company had lost them. When Mr. Drama finally came clean and admitted that they were still in the trunk of his car, Principal Fuhrer authorized a payment to cover the late fees to get us off the black-list, but not in time for that year’s musical, so we had to go through a different company (with a completely different list of shows). Mr. Drama ended up picking a show at the last minute, because it was a script he knew already, having performed it in high school. We auditioned shows we didn’t have rights to, and nearly didn’t get the rights at all to the second musical I assisted with, because another high school less than 30 minutes away was doing the same show the same weekend.
Maybe worst of all, Mr. Drama once posted a cast list (that we had agreed on together, as casting was a joint decision) at the appointed time (where students were waiting with baited breath), went home, drove back to the school in the middle of the night, PUT UP A DIFFERENT LIST and tried to act like the first list never existed. The kids flew to my room, some angry, a few in tears, demanding an explanation. I had none to give them, as the second list wasn’t what we had discussed after auditions; I hadn’t even gotten a courtesy text telling me he had changed his mind. He grossly miscast a beautiful talented young actress and did her a disservice by putting her in a vocal range she couldn’t sing in (damaging her beautiful alto), all because he felt like she had ‘paid her dues’ (despite having a huge role the year before) and shoving another deserving student, who had the best audition dramatically and vocally, into a bit part, AFTER he had given the larger part to her in the first place.
Mr. Drama Director was notorious for flying by the seat of his pants, in every area of his job, didn’t care how it affected his students or colleagues and regularly did just enough to get by. He had a big heart, but got in his own way more than you would believe. He also had a bad temper, tended to fly off the handle with a huge fit of language and rage, and was volatile under stressful situations – a great combination for the leader of any kind, let alone a high school drama production, don’t you think?
I have to admit, when I came to the realization that I wouldn’t be able to attend grad school & be involved with the musicals for those years, I was relieved. I LOVE musical theater, I love working with the kids in this medium, I loved getting to conduct a pit, I love the thrill of a curtain going up and the rush of that final curtain call, knowing you’ve left everything you had on that stage/in the pit. But deep down, I knew that Mr. Drama wasn’t a teammate I could build a flourishing program with, unless it was at the expense of my stomach lining. Each production got worse in this regard, and I knew that unless someone stepped in to mentor him (and he would accept it), it would continue to get worse.
The administration, specifically Principal Fuhrer knew about ALL of these things, even before I went to him over concerns with our casting and rehearsing a show with scripts that had been downloaded off of the internet. (I didn’t want to get blacklisted with a major rights company?! I was hoping to assist with musicals for many years to come in MY career…). I was told to do my job, keep my mouth shut, and make this production a success for my students. Principal Fuhrer said that he had laid out very clear expectations for Mr. Drama and was mentoring him personally; if he failed to meet those expectations, Principal Fuhrer would yank Mr. Drama’s contract, mid-production if necessary. I know FOR A FACT that those expectations were not met and no contracts were ever yanked. That year or in the next several years to come. I also know FOR A FACT that the above antics continued when I was no longer involved with the program. Kids told me about how he disappeared from (or never showed up to) rehearsal and how they were left running rehearsals on their own because they didn’t want the show to suck. Students were asking me to help them plan rehearsals on music, teach parts, suggest blocking… It was so sad to see kids who wanted to work being left, leaderless.
I was serving as the musical director for the spring show, teaching the vocal side of the show, as well as directing the 100% student-played pit orchestra, which the band director chose for me. This tripled my work-load, as it was now my job to make all the cuts to the score, rehearse both sets of musicians and be present for ALL the full rehearsals & every performance. Before I came, the job was always split – the choir director taught the vocals and advised the band director on suggested cuts, but the band director had the responsibility of the final cuts/changes to the score, as well as preparing and conducting the pit during the production. These jobs were part of our umbrella supplemental contracts, but it was totally fine when the band directors got fed up with the drama director and decided to dump the whole thing on the brand new 21 yo choir director, saying that it was just much much simpler and easier if the choir director did the whole thing. Principal Hugs-A-Lot fell for it and the precedent was set before I was even hired. Nice dodge, assistant band director/track coach guy. And of course, the supplemental contracts were never adjusted to reflect all this extra responsibility, but I wasn’t in teaching for the money, right? It was for the intrinsic value of getting to teach young minds… or something.
Naturally, since the track team was doing well, assistant band director/track coach guy was never punished for dodging his contractual responsibility – in fact, he was publicly praised by Principal Fuhrer for taking the pit back when I ‘dropped the ball and had to go to grad school’ TO KEEP MY LICENSE; meanwhile, they never even tried to find someone to teach the vocals – the drama director expected the kids to teach themselves. So here were my poor students, trying to teach Broadway songs to their peers, trying to teach parts on the piano and read crazy scores. They did their best, and I was super proud of them.
No one noticed that there were two years of musicals that were 90% in unison, but who cares about that? We’re not here for learning things – that’s crazy talk! And really, if we’re being honest, I shouldn’t say anything about those unison shows. If you’ve read the above, we can all see that it was really my fault. Hence the two years’ of lunch detention.
I paid my penance. Sometimes I went to McDonald’s and got breakfast for lunch. The sweet head lunch cook would drop down in the morning and let me know when they had a meal that should be ready early in case I wanted what was on the menu that day (how many school cafeterias do you know serve homemade noodles on chicken & noodles day? I rest my case.). But all in all, I felt alienated from my staff and felt the distance spread between us, that never really drifted back. To the point that by the end of year 4, when I was leaving that miserable, toxic environment, the number of people I said goodbye to, I can count on one hand.
*Music wasn’t the only group affected by this super-lame master schedule. All the co-curriculars were: art, yearbook, drama, videography, PE (thank god for summer gym), but it seemed I was always the one who was bullied about my enrollment and had things written into her evals about recruitment. No one else was given a 30 student minimum for a class to exist, but I was threatened with it regularly, while I was also threatened with being cut to half-time since I wasn’t ‘willing to do enough work to keep my own program afloat’.
Donita Westman 