Holiday Show 2023!
Dec. 22nd, 2023 06:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sorcyressToday was the last day of school in 2023 --good fucking riddance-- which means I got to participate in one of my favourite traditions: the school Holiday Show!
This has been going on for close to 40 years. On the very last day before winter break, scheduled instead of the very last class period, all the students get to go hang out in the auditorium, where they are treated to a variety show put on by the teachers! By which I mean, half an hour of us mercilessly (but lovingly!) mocking the shit out of them. We do little skits where we try to cram in as much current slang as possible1, we find popular songs and do choreographed dances, we hang around the background of other people's scenes with our phones out pretending to be students, and we just generally get to hold a mirror up to these wonderful horrible gremlins who are the reason we come in every day.
Big themes this year included a running gag about students getting food delivered (with larger and larger prop bags --think a McD's bag that's approximately four feet tall!2), finding a way to poke fun at the number of fights this year *without* crossing a line into actually inappropriate (solution: Make it Shakespeare!3), and an entire scene where the punchline was students repeatedly asking "Miss, can I borrow a charger?"4
For me, it's mostly just a chance to...relax and hang out with my coworkers, especially the ones I don't get to see as often. I mean yeah, we also want to put on a nice show for the kids, but the rehearsals are always a slapdash affair (I believe we had a final draft of the script on...Wednesday of this week, which even for us is late), the dances are being frantically practiced in the wings, inevitably there'll be multiple flubbed lines and tech mistakes, but everyone is there to Have Fun, both actors and audience, and it makes for a wonderful environment. So the real point for us is to blow off a little steam and just...make connections ("wait, it also drives *you* crazy when the kids ask what's for lunch, like teachers are in cahoots with the cafeteria?")
And because the schedule had a halfday this year, my day consisted of arriving, saying hello to two students from my first class, finishing a letter of recommendation I promised I'd get done this week, then dumping the two students on the next door teacher and cutting the next two class periods to rehearse. Then the performance. Then packing up my classroom and heading to the pub5 to spend fifteen minutes socializing before getting on my train to Maryland.
It was a good day, and a good tradition.
~Sor
MOOP!
1: Relevant words this year: rizz, sigma, gyat, npc/bot, cap, and an entire monologue recounting the plot of A Raisin in the Sun with as much cringe as possible "...Walter high key fumbles the bag when George starts flexing on him about being rich. Asagai is our humble king and said that the world should just let Beneatha cook. So, Beneatha got the ick from George; he lowkey fell off at the end."
2: The grand finale of this joke was a Dunkies iced latte literally the size of a person...by which I mean, I was put inside a dress made of butcher paper with a clear umbrella decorated with sprinkles and a straw, and I was delivered to the relevant student. It was a lot of fun to get to be the latte!
3: COWORKER 1: I deem thee in opposition to me! Draw, if you be not afraid of an alpha with twelve out of ten rizz! Brandishes foam sword
COWORKER 2: Brandishes sword as well, smirking. If I do see such a person, I will alert thee.
COWORKER 1: Villain! I have done thy mother! Approaches COWORKER 2 with sword raised
4: This is a sentence that I hear approximately four times a week, despite the fact that I do not have chargers, and that my class almost never uses chromebooks so why do you even need one?
5: ...daydrinking at the pub after school hits a little different when everyone was dismissed by like 11:15 in the morning, than 3pm. (to be fair, I think most of the people there were busy getting brunch instead of booze).
This has been going on for close to 40 years. On the very last day before winter break, scheduled instead of the very last class period, all the students get to go hang out in the auditorium, where they are treated to a variety show put on by the teachers! By which I mean, half an hour of us mercilessly (but lovingly!) mocking the shit out of them. We do little skits where we try to cram in as much current slang as possible1, we find popular songs and do choreographed dances, we hang around the background of other people's scenes with our phones out pretending to be students, and we just generally get to hold a mirror up to these wonderful horrible gremlins who are the reason we come in every day.
Big themes this year included a running gag about students getting food delivered (with larger and larger prop bags --think a McD's bag that's approximately four feet tall!2), finding a way to poke fun at the number of fights this year *without* crossing a line into actually inappropriate (solution: Make it Shakespeare!3), and an entire scene where the punchline was students repeatedly asking "Miss, can I borrow a charger?"4
For me, it's mostly just a chance to...relax and hang out with my coworkers, especially the ones I don't get to see as often. I mean yeah, we also want to put on a nice show for the kids, but the rehearsals are always a slapdash affair (I believe we had a final draft of the script on...Wednesday of this week, which even for us is late), the dances are being frantically practiced in the wings, inevitably there'll be multiple flubbed lines and tech mistakes, but everyone is there to Have Fun, both actors and audience, and it makes for a wonderful environment. So the real point for us is to blow off a little steam and just...make connections ("wait, it also drives *you* crazy when the kids ask what's for lunch, like teachers are in cahoots with the cafeteria?")
And because the schedule had a halfday this year, my day consisted of arriving, saying hello to two students from my first class, finishing a letter of recommendation I promised I'd get done this week, then dumping the two students on the next door teacher and cutting the next two class periods to rehearse. Then the performance. Then packing up my classroom and heading to the pub5 to spend fifteen minutes socializing before getting on my train to Maryland.
It was a good day, and a good tradition.
~Sor
MOOP!
1: Relevant words this year: rizz, sigma, gyat, npc/bot, cap, and an entire monologue recounting the plot of A Raisin in the Sun with as much cringe as possible "...Walter high key fumbles the bag when George starts flexing on him about being rich. Asagai is our humble king and said that the world should just let Beneatha cook. So, Beneatha got the ick from George; he lowkey fell off at the end."
2: The grand finale of this joke was a Dunkies iced latte literally the size of a person...by which I mean, I was put inside a dress made of butcher paper with a clear umbrella decorated with sprinkles and a straw, and I was delivered to the relevant student. It was a lot of fun to get to be the latte!
3: COWORKER 1: I deem thee in opposition to me! Draw, if you be not afraid of an alpha with twelve out of ten rizz! Brandishes foam sword
COWORKER 2: Brandishes sword as well, smirking. If I do see such a person, I will alert thee.
COWORKER 1: Villain! I have done thy mother! Approaches COWORKER 2 with sword raised
4: This is a sentence that I hear approximately four times a week, despite the fact that I do not have chargers, and that my class almost never uses chromebooks so why do you even need one?
5: ...daydrinking at the pub after school hits a little different when everyone was dismissed by like 11:15 in the morning, than 3pm. (to be fair, I think most of the people there were busy getting brunch instead of booze).
no subject
on 2023-12-22 11:22 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2023-12-23 03:59 am (UTC)no subject
on 2023-12-27 03:28 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2024-01-02 08:25 pm (UTC)That one got an actual LOL from me, not least because I'm certain Shakespeare would totally approve.
(And wow, I have absolutely no clue what most of that current slang means. Which, I suppose, is kind of the point.)
no subject
on 2024-01-03 02:43 am (UTC)That's because it's the only line actually lifted verbatim from the bard!
(Rizz is essentially "charisma", but with somewhat of an element of specifically towards attracting people you're into, alpha is the standard weird alpha/beta/sigma bullshit male bullshit, gyat is apparently a large butt (and therefore either good or bad depending on usage), cap is to lie, and I don't know how to explain most of the Raisin in the Sun monologue, but maybe context is enough?)
~Sor
no subject
on 2024-01-03 04:05 am (UTC)If it had been from the duel scene from Romeo and Juliet I would have been embarrassed at not recognizing the line. I'll forgive myself for forgetting a line from Titus.
(I actually have 10% of a Shakespearean play in my back pocket -- someday, if I'm ever looking for a different stupidly-ambitious project, I might finish it. My objective is to write a play that is better than Shakespeare: specifically, better than Titus Andronicus, which seems like a potentially-achievable goal.)