Fine Arts Night

Seth officially started as the interim drama teacher at Tacoma Baptist High School back on March 30th, but this last half of the month has been crunch time for him as his students will be performing at TBS’ Fine Arts Night, which is an open house to showcase the work that students have done in choir/band/music/art/drama class. In addition to the families of the students who have artwork displayed or are performing, they’re hoping prospective students will be coming. I don’t know how much weight it will hold in reality, but as Seth is going to be applying for one of the teaching positions that is opening up for a full time position next school year, he sees this Fine Arts Night as important to his “interview”. He probably was placing too much importance on it, but even if that’s true and his job application isn’t on the line, he knew many families would be watching his students perform and he saw their performance as a reflection on him. There have been so many minor setbacks (a scheduling conflict with a track meet, which means half of his class won’t be there, one of his actors backing out of his role last minute, miscommunication between teachers about who gets the stage when, etc,) that it has made for a pretty stressful week for him.

My mom took the day off and came over on Wednesday to watch the boys while I went to drama class with Seth. She brought a bag of “black dirt” and a bunch of vegetable starts with her and the boys had a hayday planting them in our back yard raised beds. I very much appreciated having a break from the kids, but it was also fun to see Seth teach and to see the progress that his students had made on their scenes. He asked me to come along because he was feeling like the students weren’t making progress and he felt like he needed an extra pair of eyes and ears. I was able to help some of the students with their blocking and most importantly help them understand the context of their scenes since they hadn’t had enough time to do that yet. I just love watching Seth interact with other people. He’s such a great communicator and people really respond to him, but I don’t necessarily see that very often. He’s been so stressed out about this performance, but I think I was able to help and, most of all, reassure him that the students were on track. I also realized how much I miss sitting at a desk and creating student assignments.

Thursday, my parents were building a fence and offered to watch the kids, even though I was originally planning on bringing them along to TBS with us. I went to class with Seth and then stayed and worked on tax stuff in his classroom until the performance that night. It really did go beautifully. I was so proud of Seth and of the students.

The Crucible

The Importance of Being Earnest

Macbeth