ROOM 130

One of my favorite asshats is in the news again this week: Elon Musk. A dear old friend texted me Tuesday with the news that Elon had mocked one of his own employees for having muscular dystrophy. Not shocking is the fact that this exchange is currently blowing up on the internet, especially on Twitter, where it all took place. Not shocking is that most people are commenting from their own soapboxes about how Musk’s words are “shameful”, “pathetic”, and “not inclusive of a diverse world” that we are all trying to build. Not shocking is that some others don’t blame Musk at all and have mentioned that disabled people whine and complain as victims when it best suits them and demand that society, which is designed for people who can stand, walk, and run, bend to the whims of the disabled. What is not shocking is that people will forget this whole Elon Musk exchange in 10 minutes when the next, new shiny news item comes to take its place.

What is shocking? The fact that anyone is surprised by an exchange like this. ALL of us have lived through things like this, and most of the time, we push them down. Everyone has heard or made jokes about race, religion, sexual preference, weight, clothes, money, style, choice of career, family, mental illness, differing learning styles, choice of hobby, etc. etc. Since many people are self-absorbed, these comments get internalized: Were they referring to me? Is that about me? How do we react most of the time? We don’t…or we laugh along and file away our own judgement of the person making the remark. I feel that years of comments, jokes, and fooling around are like a million paper cuts: none of them really hurt by themselves, but each one over the years adds up. We stay positive until we can’t. Sooner or later, a knife comes along and instead of a paper cut, we have an open wound that we need help sewing up. I believe that Haraldur Thorleifsson (the Twitter employee exchanging words with Musk) has an open wound and is telling the larger world what all of us should already know: MOST OF US ARE BLIND TO THE CONTINUED TREATMENT OF OTHER HUMANS. We speak up and then go back to being complacent. I’m as guilty as anyone. I dealt with paper cuts for years and years in my career. Then, a knife wound gutted me. Let me tell you a story that I’ll call room 130.

For 25 years of my life, I spent 7 hours, 5 days a week for 36 weeks in room 130. It was a square classroom, made of concrete bricks with 5 windows facing east. The room had 5 stairs in it leading up to a smaller room and offices that I could not access (paper cut…I didn’t need to). Room 130 also had an exit door with a makeshift metal ramp leading out to a large, noisy gymnasium where 90-100 middle school kids had classes all day long (paper cut, most of the day, I taught band and when we played, we were louder than the gym classes). In room 130 there were about 60 folding metal chairs, wooden storage shelves built into the wall, some from who knows when and some built by wonderful parent volunteers. In my 25 years in this room, the windows were replaced once, and the room was painted twice, first by students, and the second time, by the school’s custodial staff. My middle school band students adopted room 130 over the years as a clubhouse. I hung album covers on the wall, I commissioned a mural of The Blues Brothers to be painted on the door, and an Evolution of Music mural on the wall depicting monkeys evolving into silhouettes of The Beatles crossing Abbey Road. Room 130 became more than a classroom to me and my kids; it became a safe space for thousands of adolescents to hang out in anytime they were free during school. I always had a group in there in the morning before class, during any free periods, lunch, and after school. I loved the kids like they were my own, and I fought for the music program, and made sure all of my kids felt important and cared for. Paper cuts were things like leaks in the room going unchecked for days, and one in the ceiling that went on and off for years. Furniture and other equipment like fans and extension cords being gone after a summer vacation without anyone telling me where the stuff went, even though it was labelled with my name. Autistic learners being placed in the room next door where they couldn’t learn due to my class noise, and using a squeaky “therapy swing” while I was teaching because there was simply “no where else in our old building to place these kids.” Constant basketballs, frisbees, baseballs and other objects hitting my classroom door all day long. My classroom door to the gym being blocked by folding chairs, volleyball nets and phys ed equipment left out by students, and not being physically able to get out of my own classroom by myself. If there was ever an emergency, I couldn’t open the door due to the ramp being in the way, while the second exit being a door that swung in so I could not open that door without my wheelchair being in the way. All paper cuts. I worked around all of these and many schedule changes, kids being pulled from my class for various reasons, a changing scale of how we were allowed to grade the kids, “experts” coming and going with buzzwords about classroom management, curriculum. You would seldom hear me complain because I knew my students had my back. I had almost no discipline issues because my classes were engaging, fun, and delivered in a relaxed atmosphere. Paper cuts? ALL teachers dealt with them. Once or twice a month a bunch of staff would go out after school to blow off steam, and share paper cut stories. It’s part of every work place. I loved teaching because I knew that my kids were consistently learning lessons that life is never neat, tidy, or pretty and that no one would solve your problems for you. You needed to work as a diverse group of humans to accomplish anything. The fact that I taught from a wheelchair didn’t phase the kids at all. When I had a manual folding chair, I had a group of 5-6 kids each morning rain, snow, or sun come out to my car to help me into school each day. They called themselves The Moeschen Mafia. They were never absent because they knew I needed them. Life lessons for them and me as well. These life lessons went on for 25 years in Room 130 while my vehicle of teaching the lessons was through instruments. In room 130, kids played flute, clarinet, saxophone, trumpet, trombone, drums, mallet instruments and sometimes oboe and bassoon. I was trained on all of these instruments in college, but by the late 1990’s, I was only playing percussion due to my muscular dystrophy. It didn’t matter to the kids. I had a teaching partner who was awesome at playing brass, and we used guests, YouTube, high school and college musicians when we could to augment the instruction. We brought band groups to local festivals, Washington D.C., and averaged 4 performances each school year for the local community. Room 130 contained magic due to the dynamic of the humans in the room year after year. When I began teaching, there was one band of 30 kids for three grades. At the peak, along with my partner Nikki, we had 5 bands (three grade level groups, one honors group and a jazz ensemble) with 240 kids enrolled out of a school population of 900. Room 130 was the place to be. Paper cuts about the “nerd kids”, “band gnomes” and “music geeks”….we wore the paper cuts like badges of pride. Nikki and I knew that we were helping kids learn about life through music. We had many, many good times. Then, in June of 2016 Nikki left to take a job closer to her growing family, our entire music department got a coordinator, another dear friend John, who taught chorus for more than 30 years retired all at the same time. My principal said it would be best for me to “embrace the change.” I assured him that I would have no trouble with that, as I was adept at my changing progressive health condition. I didn’t tell him that, but I thought it, as I always do when faced with adversity in life: nothing is harder than my MD. If I can manage that, with help and support, anything else people throw at me is akin to blowing spitballs at a battleship.

Music in Room 130 continued for another few years with my new partner Emma. She was a spunky, intelligent, motivated, and ORGANIZED young teacher who kicked my butt into planning more than I had in years. Any veteran teacher will tell you that after a while, you can think through a lesson, know where the pitfalls will be, fix things on the fly and just go. Not always the best idea, but everyone gets complacent here or there and I’m no different. Emma destroyed my complacency and we had things cooking in room 130. Emma stayed 2 years and then decided she wanted to start a family and look for another career besides teaching. Treatment from some of the more difficult middle school kids, and parents had become something she didn’t want to deal with. I’ll never forget Emma in a meeting in her classroom with 2 parents and a guidance counselor as she was accused of being racist for not allowing a kid to go to the bathroom. It was terrible, and I think that was way more than a paper cut for Emma. I felt powerless to help her besides arguing with the guidance counselor later that the whole meeting was ridiculous and should have involved administration.

Finally, during Staff Appreciation Week of 2019, one week after receiving a positive teaching observation report from my head of music director, I received my Elon Musk style gaping wound. My Superintendent, who admittedly doesn’t know which end of a trumpet to blow into, came to see me and simply told me that I had become “too handicapped” to teach band. I asked him if there were parent complaints (no), I asked him if students had complained (no), and I asked him “why now without my input?” I was told that he “had watched my condition deteriorate over the years, and that he couldn’t begin to imagine how difficult it had been for me. Although it was going to be a sensitive, and difficult decision, it was the best for all parties involved.”

I had no words. I sat on this silently for a week, while meeting with my coordinator and principal.
No one told me where this germ of an idea to remove me from band had begun (as I type this, I still haven’t learned the truth). I was shattered and thought, no one wants to have a life-altering decision made FOR them instead of WITH them. 25 years in Room 130 and now I would be reassigned to a different classroom where I would teach students who had no interest in playing or making music, but instead took a music appreciation class to fill out their schedules as a requirement of music instruction hours for the state. I had always had a few sections of this class along with instruments, but not as the entire run of my schedule. My teaching load ballooned to over 300 kids with classes of 28-30 adolescents who didn’t choose the class anymore than I chose to leave Room 130. In short, it was difficult, and I found it extremely unfair that after 25 years of service teaching in the town that I grew up in, this life altering decision was being made for me and not with me. I was never asked how I felt or if I considered how my students would feel. The end of the 2019 school year turned into a mess, but there were a bunch of silver linings as well. I was in a daze as I staggered toward June with 2 more concerts to go as well as a trip to The Boston Pops coming up. How would I do this? I was not given any guidance but just told to finish the year. In another ridiculous conversation, I was told that in the future, I could still instruct jazz ensemble as it was “less rigorous” than teaching full band. Anyone reading this that has taught is laughing at that I’m sure.

I slowly began to understand that I had my gaping wound. How would I react? What, if any action would I take? Would anyone care? Would anyone actually tell me the truth? Would I still enjoy teaching? Remember what I said: Most people are blind to the continued treatment of other humans. Wait until you hear what happened next. I didn’t say a word. That’s a new thing for me.

End of Part I.

Stay safe, stay awesome and stay tuned.

Life in Room 130 circa 2003. A giant stuffed Snoopy that a student won during a performance trip at Six Flags New England.