an irresistibly bad idea, revisited

Yeah, remember that?

How my silly shiksa self was going to bring theatahh and culchuh to wealthy Jewish kiddos at a local hoity-toity school?

Starting this week?

Weell ….. God has spoken from the mountaintop, I guess, because last Friday, I received an email from Vest Boy titled “Unfortunately …”

As in “Unfortunately, this session of classes will have to be postponed due to insufficient enrollment.”

Oh, and “Postponed” = “Canceled”

And “Insufficient enrollment” = “No one gives a tiny rat’s bottom”

So okay. Good thing I had a gnawing suspicion growing in my gut over the last week or so and had put practically zero effort or thought into my class. I did send Vest Boy a description of my class about a week ago — as he’d requested — and, if I do say so myself, it was a sublime masterpiece of fluff and nothingness. I wanted to give myself as wide a berth as possible in the class to do whatever the heck I pleased, basically, and I could tell from my conversation with Vest Boy that he would be easily wooed by certain buzz words and phrases that say — literally — nothing. I had such fun writing it. I embraced my inner wanker. My inner womyn’s studies teacher. My inner Birkenstock-wearing artist. I used terms like “unleashing creativity” and “freeing imaginations” and “inner journey.” I loved myself and I hated myself. About an hour after I sent it, Vesty wrote back gushing “ooooh” and “ahhhhh” and “faaaabbb.”

But now, alas, my super faaabbb class will not be happening and MB will have to stop chanting, “JEW-S-A! JEW-S-A!” all around the house as he started to do during Olympics when these two things — teaching dramer to the bubbellahs and world-wide athletic competition — were first colliding.

Now, I have a thing or two to say about this and I will only say it to you, dearies, because Vest Boy prolly ain’t gonna listen to me.

Which is too bad.

Because there are a couple of problems with this whole deal, as I see it.

— Vest Boy wants to create an “After School Arts Collective” featuring drama, art, dance, and music. Fine. I guess. But — Problem 1: Vest Boy is a towering bore. A huge turtlenecked bore. As he droned at me for that teeth-grinding hour, quite honestly, my mind began to drift fondly to the comparative awesomeness of the speculum and the Pap smear. Sadly, oh so sadly, Vest Boy utterly lacks any personal charisma or charm or joie de vivre or the ability to fake joie de vivre, like me. Still, he clearly wanted me to “catch” the excitement about the program that he himself didn’t possess. He wasn’t tingly with anticipation, but expected me to be. He was, however, very “serious” about the program, very intense. In a sort of tented-fingers intellectual sort of way. Blah. Boring. Kill me. Blech. To sell the notion of, uhm, staying after school to middle and high schoolers, you need a little more of a spark. A teeny bit beyond just an over-enunciated elitism. You need the ability to sell it. Make it sound desirable. Not just educational, but maybe even fun, dude, fun. I’m just not sure that Vest Boy — given his ponderous personality — is the person to sell this program to the kiddos. I don’t think he remembers fun.

— Problem 2: He seems to have no actual plan for promoting the Fyvush Finkle Arts Collective. The day I was in his class, as he dismissed them — as they were scrambling for the door — he called out, “Oh! Don’t forget to sign up for FFAC! Great classes! Sign up!” I sat there watching him and thought, “Dude, they stopped listening to you, like, 20 minutes ago. No way are they listening to you now.” I mean, it was a literal stampede to get out of that classroom. That’s not the way to do it. It can’t be treated as an afterthought or you end up with — what did he call it? — “insufficient enrollment.” He needs an actual plan to promote it. Regularly and with feeling, for Yahweh’s sake! I could give him some ideas. But … eh.

— Finally, Problem 3: I believe that for most kids that age to stay after school and participate in something, there needs to be some kind of payoff. In high school, I stayed after school for two things only: Tennis practice and play rehearsals. Those two things had payoffs. In tennis, I got to play matches where people watched me and I either won or lost. With play rehearsals, eventually, I got to perform in a show, in front of an audience, and feel the thrill and joy of doing so. Payoffs. Tangible goals. A finish line of some kind. Vest Boy is basically asking these kids to PAY to stay after school for these sort of meandering, exploratory classes. Some of the classes are just repeats of classes already offered during school hours! Uhm, what?? So if I’m a high school student, I would stay for that why? Why not tell the kids staying after school for the art workshops that their work will be shown in an informal gallery show at the end of the class? Why not tell the kids staying after school for the drama workshops that they’ll perform some scene work or something in a studio performance at the end of the class? Give the kids some payoffs. An audience. Show them they’ll be noticed and esteemed for their work. Don’t just make them stay after school for these rambling insular classes. It’s like Honors Detention or something. It’s weird and it bugs me.

So the whole first “session” of these classes has been canceled and I only committed to the first session. The next one starts late November and judging from the tone of his email, he seems to be assuming that everyone involved in the so-far-non-existent Fyvush Finkle Arts Collective will still be available in 2 1/2 months from 3:30 to 5:00 Monday through Thursday. Vest Boy, I’ve got stuff I’m doing and pursuing. To simply assume that everyone will just continue to keep that late-afternoon 90-minute time span open for the next two months is — well, is it rude? Wishful? Just unthinking? I don’t know.

It’s something that I don’t like, is what it is. That’s all I really know.

So. All this to say, sorry, pippa. I thought it would make some good blogging, but now I don’t know if my shiksa self will ever get to teach God’s chosen children how to be a tree or move like a grizzly or melt like an ice cream cone.

Or, you know, whatever the heck it is that drama teachers actually do.