A Year Of Hope

"Don't listen to my poem until the showcase,"

Jane had said before we entered our first rehearsal.

"Wait, why?"

"You're going to get bored of seeing the same performances over and over again.. I want you to be excited to hear mine."

"Okay, but you can't listen to mine either until the showcase."

"I wasn't planning on it. I wanted to be excited to hear yours on the night of the performances."

The first day of rehearsals was more technical than rehearsing. They explained the order of things, and how things would be run. The visual arts were often accompanied by music. There were two "living art" pieces, a one a statue and one a painting with several people, and those were to be accompanied by music majors, both singers. There were two speed painters, one of which was going to be another pianist, and the other a violinists.

There were two acts to be preformed by the theatre majors, one of them a musical number from Hamilton, and that was to have music majors help with the music as well. The one that was not a musical number was a scene from Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra.

There was two musical acts that were to be performed on their own, which were the made of the people that would also be helping with the Hamilton act so they could have some time on stage. There were two dance performances that were also to be accompanied by music majors that had already performed in one of the other performances.

There were three dance numbers, each to be accompanied by musicians that helped in the other acts as well. Two of them ballets, and one of them a couple who would be swing dancing.

And then there were five creative writing pieces, all of them poems due to the nature of this event.

The speed painters weren't going to actually paint until the week of dress rehearsals. Everyone who wasn't a part of the living art pieces, the theatre performances, and the dancers was supposed to wear either a black dress, or a black slacks and shoes, and a white dress shirt with a tie with a suit jacket.

They alternated the types of pieces so no two types of performances were back to back, and one of the professors on the Fine Arts Council were to introduce each performances, and at the very end, everyone was to line up and the audience would applaud.

The first day two days dedicated to learning how to walk on and off the stage in order of performances, and how to line up at the end, and then after that, the real rehearsals began.

The next month and a half was busy outside of rehearsals as well. In Intro to Education, we had our Educational Biographies were due, where we had to write about our time in school, and why this lead us to become educators. Looking back, I had a few teachers that were good, but I mostly had really bad ones. They didn't care for their students, and it was apparent. They chose the profession for the convenient schedule, and since many of them were tenured, they hardly put any effort into their lessons. And those teachers were the reason I wanted to be a teacher. I had wanted to help fix the system from the inside.

Jane had asked me to proof read hers.

"I typically get Sam to... but this is personal."

"You don't have to explain to me. Email it, I'll read it."

Jane's reasoning for becoming a teacher contrasted greatly from my own. She instead talked about her time in high school when she believed her mental illness developed, and when her ADHD was hard to manage. She never did homework, and turned in all assignments late, but when she did turn them in, she always did well and she scored well on almost all her tests. People thought she was a burnout or wasted potential and she believed it too, The only thing that kept her from failing were her two favorite math teachers who noticed she was struggling and ended up helping her to pull up her grades and she graduated. She stated that those to math teachers were her reason for becoming a teacher because she wanted to help other students to reach there full potential, and to possible be one of those few people who are able to help struggling students like they had for her.