A special challenge when teaching teens

 

Background:  Rob Reese of New York City accepted a teaching position at Trollwood (that’s right, Troll-Wood) Performing Arts School in the very non-New-York city of Fargo, North Dakota.  This is one of his tales of both teaching and culture shock.

Tornadoes in this area evidently happen with enough frequency that they have a system in place; the kids immediately recognize it.  Not with enough frequency, though, that they don’t absolutely panic and throw a fit when they hear it.  At this point, all of the regular classes for the day are long since finished, and I, as the improv club teacher, am the only eligible voter/draftee in the vicinity.  

In case you’re ever in a similar situation, here are...

Rob’s Tips for Handling a Gaggle of Panicking Teenagers During a Tornado Warning Following Forty Five Minutes of Semi-Unstructured Improv Play:

      1.      Allow them to run around like idiots for approximately 3 minutes.
2.      Verbally attempt to quietly calm them down for 1 minute.
3.      Give up and allow them to run around like idiots for another 2 minutes.
4.      Do that thing with raising your hand that you do when you’re “really disappointed” that
            they’re all talking at the same time (improv is listening, after all).
5.      Sit them down and explain that there’s no tornado coming until you damn well say that
           there’s a tornado coming, and IF that happens, you’ll tell them to go get fetal by that
           wall.
6.      Have them stack all of the chairs in the room over by that wall (basically just for
           something to do).
7.      Get all of the books and bags and everything over to that table.
8.      Move the chair stacks to that other wall.
9.      30 minutes of big, physical, loud, stupid improv games until parents start showing up 
            to pick up kids.
10.    Don’t kill any kids yourself, or use the phrase, “I guarantee the tornado won’t hurt you if I
           snap your little whiny neck myself.”

So....school is cancelled today, because of the storm..  The Red River has annexed a good portion of the park, and there’s a citywide state of emergency.  I guess they’re ticketing people that they find on the road right now.

Back to “Auntie Em, Auntie Em!”  I finally got them playing again, to get their minds off the tornado.  I had tried to do some actual scenes:

ROB:    All right, who wants to do some scenes.

KID ONE & KID TWO:  We do! We Do!

ROB:   Good, let’s give them a suggestion.

KID THREE:  Notebook

ROB:  Notebook, good, ready, scene!

KID ONE:   Hey, kid two, look at my notebook spinning around in that tornado!

ROB:   And end scene!

I got smart and did a big silly loud game thing that I let them keep doing until parents started showing up to pick up their kids. 

I’m left with the two kids who have no hope of rescue.  It becomes clear that I’m gong to have to take them home.  My summer roommate, Joe (the fight choreographer from Chicago), is at least as curmudgeonly as I am and I know that he’s going to LOVE this. 

There are very specific rules and memos and such about being alone with students, and it’s verbotten off campus, so I’m actually fairly glad that there are two of them.  We were still relatively dry at this point, and made a dash for my car.  I popped the locks and we all sat in big puddles inside the auto (did i mention that I didn’t think to roll up the windows earlier when it was still nice out?) 

I had considered myself done with one-on-one with teenagers for the evening, but I learned a lot about the Fargo area and Scandinavian culture hanging with those kids for a bit.  For example:

1)   Ice must be 5.5 inches to walk on it, 1.5 feet to drive a Ford Escort on to it, 2 feet to pull an icehouse on to it, and five feet to drive your pickup truck.

2)   There’s a thing called Jell-O salad, it includes Jell-O, and salad.  When I say salad, I mean the kind with lettuce and carrots.

3)   There’s a thing called Ludafisk, or something like that, probably spelled with more consonants.  They take a fish, dip it in Lye, (yes Lye, like in Drano) Bury it for a spell, then cook it and eat it.

4)   The girl has been offered a variety of university scholarships for bowling.

After filling us in on local cuisine, and surprising us incredibly with tidbits like the rates of alcoholism and depression in North Dakota are higher than the national average, the boy makes a call and is instructed to go to stay with an aunt who lives nearby.  This leaves Joe and I with the fifteen or sixteen year old girl.  Luckily, two female teachers from the school live down the hall. 

If her Midwestern parents had all of the information, I don’t know if they would have felt more comfortable with their fifteen or sixteen year old daughter staying with two thirty-something, straight theater men, or the lesbian couple we threw her with.  I know WE felt better with that arrangement, if only because I was about to snap some little blonde necks if I had to hear any more yammering that night.  Not her fault, of course, she’s a good kid and really one of my favorites.  I was just exhausted.  

In my aprartment just now,we just saw a flash flood warning on the TV, but since we have Joe’s 25- year- old, 14-inch black and white tv with rabbit ears, we can’t see the bottom of the screen where they tell us the names of the counties that are in immediate danger.  If you don’t get any more journal entries, look for me floating in Canada.

 

Rob Reese  "Amnesia Wars Improvisation"      www.amnesiawars.com
New York, NY