High School is Wicked

OK. Tomorrow is the big day. Tomorrow the teenagers will flood my room. They will get the freshly copied syllabus, they will begin testing and pushing the limits of my classroom. They will begin looking around and seeing who is popular, and who is not (thus the song from Wicked with Glinda and Elphaba....and yes, at NYU, I did actually get cast as Glinda in a play...I had to play her two different ways...one in which I created a neurotic Glinda who just had a nervous breakdown and was a chain smoker, you should have me show it to you sometime).

Back to the kids....

They will form clicks. They will put themselves into groups, the nerds, the jocks, the cheerleaders, the preppies, the Christians, the atheists, the emo kids....so many, many different ways to label one another and differentiate themselves from the next kid...and when they come into my room, I want to strip it all away. I want them to see a little bit more into each other, I want to encourage the shy student to speak up, the class clown to listen, the bully to feel tender emotions....how will I do this? Through the great literature of the world, through ideas, through discussion, through teaching and fostering and caring and being interested in them....the characters in literature are great reflections of ourselves, and it is through relating to them that perhaps we form a little bit more of who we are. That is the power behind stories.

And so, in preparation, for going back to high school, I took out one of my favorite teenage dramas about the seriousness of cheerleading....and it reaffirmed to me my mantra for the school year...that's right all you teenagers full of angst and hormones. I say to you...


BRING IT ON!