Category Archives: Uncategorized

Hiding.

February 21, 2016arts education, classical music, human behavior, public education, relationships, social commentary, sociology, Uncategorizedillumination, light, public school music teachers, related arts teachers, retired teachers, self-actualizationruth ann scanzillo

You could say that I spent twenty five years hiding. In public education.

It’s possible.

You get a room. (Or, when times are tight, you don’t – in which case, you get a “cart”, and a 10×10 storage closet for the djembes and tubanos and Orff xylophones). You get a schedule. And, you get students. All the students. Every single student enrolled in the school. And, you get all five days of the week, just like everybody else with a full time job.

Beyond that, most everybody else gets from you a solid forty minutes of downtime every week. (Not all; some).The bosses like you best when they never have to remember that you are even in the building. Actually make your presence known, and you could already be in trouble.

Count on hearing about every other teacher’s birthday over the morning announcements. Expect that, when you reach your big 50th, there will be a faculty meeting scheduled keeping you on the premises for an extra forty minutes after the students leave, with nary a mention of your special day. And, of course, no announcement.

Put the entire enrollment on stage every winter and spring, in full concert mode. Get one chance to do all this in the evening, properly, but when the administrative staff is stuck running parking duty for five hundred parents, expect to be relegated thereafter to nine o’clock a.m. Greet the parents who show up in the morning because they don’t have day jobs. Recognize the docile humans, easily led to their folding chairs in the gym so that the auditorium can remain dark and the parking lot unattended, and thank them for coming.

Slip on a dusty stage floor during the musical (at 9 a.m.) lose your additional footing on a choral riser with an unstable frame, fly into the air and land in the pit in full view of an auditorium filled to capacity with K, 1 and 2, and know even before it happens that the principal isn’t even in the room to witness. Break your hip, your sacra, and a bone in your hand. Count on Workman’s Comp to provide your medical attention thereafter, preventing your ability to sue for damages.

Fall in love with thousands of children. Between the hours of 8 am and 2pm daily, help raise them. Be there as they grow into adolescence. Feel them turn. Face them, every day, the handful of sullen, dismissive ones who alpha their way into dominance over hundreds. Feel the ache in your chest. Experience the mild trauma of diminishing returns. Vow to walk away and disappear.

Finally, stop hiding. Step assuredly into your own light. Represent. Collect your thoughts and the sum of your experience. And, sign your name to your own life’s work.

littlebarefeetblog.com

Protected: Personal Proverb # 47.

February 14, 2016personal proverbs, Uncategorizedruth ann scanzillo

Making My Day.

February 12, 2016civic commentary, contemplative essays, gratitude, nostalgia, Uncategorizedruth ann scanzillo

Maybe it’s something as simple as the position of the sun. Or, whatever orb is responsible for illuminating our firmament around these parts anymore. I’ve learned to question everything, of late, and the legitimacy of the physical world which we’ve taken for granted over the past century or so also lands at the feet of the speculative unknown. Let alone what’s worthy — what’s real, for God’s sake?

But, for whatever cause, there’s a pronounced dreariness in the atmosphere. We’re forced to listen to candidates for the highest office in our land remind us of partisan deadlock and incipient corruption. Our Commonwealth is in chaos. Our local school district teeters on the brink of bankruptcy. Our regional cultural institution caves to the aesthetically vacant and self-serving monied, promising to destroy instead of preserve. Our community water supply joins the burgeoning list of the lead contaminated. Our regional sick take dutiful trips to the local treatment center to receive their poison, courtesy the insidious medical industrial complex. Half of our formerly employed wonder where their next paycheck will come from. And, another winter storm warning promises the threat of total social shut down, just in time for Valentine’s Day.

The only solution seems to be to move toward minimalism. Get small. Pull in. Seek the kernels, the seeds, the gems. Look within.

When we were children, curling up on a comfy sofa or the middle of our own bed with a really good book was one of life’s singular pleasures. Having a simple sandwich. Listening to a beautiful song – maybe even singing one. Taking a walk past nearby trees, untouched by any greater agenda than to keep on growing. This, to an adult looking back, a symbolic image of living within our means. And, back then, many of us were happy to do just that.

I write this to remind myself. When did all the ugliness descend? How many years had we already wasted, fretting over things outside of the realm of our own influence? We can begin every morning, each recreating our own parameters for complete freedom. Deciding to do so will make all the difference between submitting to the oppressiveness that surrounds us, and having one, singular sunny day.