ROOM 130 PART 2

When I write each week, I think before I type and I type mostly for myself. Most times I have found writing to be therapeutic and healing for me simply to tell stories, laugh, and share with the universe that all of us are mostly the same on the inside. We all want to be seen, be heard, and be believed. What I am never prepared for is how and what pieces will resonate with you. It must be like writing songs, which I have also done. You write for yourself, or to flush out your soul, and sometimes the music and lyrics resonate with others and it can feel like the song was actually written for you. Unfortunately, you never know when or where lightning will strike and the words or music will touch others. Judging by the messages, it seems that last week’s words resonated with a lot of you. I suppose we have all had paper cuts. Please read part one if you haven’t. In the teaching world, we call that the “tie-in”. (We don’t…I just made that up…)

Here’s what happened next:

I stayed quiet for a week. I only had conversations about the school situation with my wife. I waited one week for a scheduled meeting with my supervisor and building principal to discuss two recent classroom observations. (In our three year teaching certification cycle for the state of New Hampshire, we are required to be observed by supervisors and principals teaching different lessons, and then critiqued. Most often these are painless and without pressure as long as you are prepared). The meeting proceeded with a giant elephant in the middle of the room, while both parties told me that my lessons were “proficient” (however you want to define that…yes, the school district has a criteria). I listened patiently and said I was glad to hear that. My principal then asked me if I would like to talk “about the other thing.” Paper cut. Not, are you ok? or I’m sorry this is happening. I spoke with anger about how poorly I felt the entire situation had been handled. I asked where and how this started without ANYONE asking me how I felt or if I was still up to the task of teaching instruments. I then asked how I was supposed to explain all this to my 6 band classes with a final performance coming up as well as an 8th grade field trip at the end of the year. I was told that I should “wait as long as I can to tell them.” Paper cut.

This meeting took place just before lunch and lasted about 20 minutes. I went to a free classroom where a bunch of my staff friends and I ate each day. I was quiet and brooding. One of the teachers asked if I was ok, and that I hadn’t seemed like myself lately. I let it be known what I was dealing with and what had happened. Everyone was supportive and told me that I should seek union help, as well as an outside lawyer. Following lunch, I went back to room 130 and taught two 8th grade band classes. These were two of the most difficult periods of my career. Although I was full of paper cuts and now had a gaping wound, I said nothing to the kids. We had our final concert of the year in another week and I wanted the focus on the performance, not me.

One of the teachers (I still don’t know who) that heard my lunch story began talking with other staff at school. Before the end of the day I was receiving emails asking if I was alright and if I wanted to talk, or go out for a drink. The staff at my school was, and is, a group of dedicated educators who also “get it”. We have each other’s backs in hard times and it was nice that people were concerned. I went home. I was super stressed.

Sometime that afternoon, the information reached social media (I don’t know where it started), but then I realized the famous Benjamin Franklin quote was true: “Three may keep a secret, if two are dead.” I should have kept my mouth shut at lunch, but it was too hard and too much had happened. Parents began to email me, and a few of my private lesson parents had my cell number, and so the calls and texts began. Everyone was incredulous, supportive and ready to act. I explained to everyone that the Superintendent was within his rights to re-assign any staff member as long as we were still teaching in our area of certification. My hours, benefits and pay were to remain the same, but my job would now consist of 12 sections of kids that were not so interested in music, didn’t play an instrument, sing, or want to be engaged in active music making. I already had 6 sections of this class, as well as 6 sections of band, but that would be gone the following school year.There was a nice mental balance in teaching half instruments and half not, but that would be gone as well. Gaping wound.

I don’t think anyone was prepared for the fallout of this decision and how it was handled. Current students met with the principal, past students and parents reached out to me, wrote letters, and made phone calls to the Superintendent and the school board. More than 5,000 people signed a petition, led by a senior at Salem High School who was about to go into music education in college. She also scheduled a meeting with the district music supervisor to try to understand why and how this happened. She got nowhere and was quite upset to learn how the adult world can work. In speaking with her later, I told her to remember this, for if she goes into a leadership role someday in education, this is how NOT to treat people. Paper cut. Social media groups popped up with titles like “Save Moeschen”, which led to people emailing me asking if I was sick or dying. The New Hampshire ABC television affiliate showed up in the parking lot after school one day and took me across the street off school property for an interview after telling me that they had already spoken with the Superintendent and would I like to tell my side of the story….3 local newspapers ran stories. A woman who works in the muscular dystrophy charity space, who is also a friend, reached out to let me know that she had contacts at the Ellen show, and could connect me with a producer there to go on national TV and speak about disability. I declined. It was a stressful circus and now ALL of my classes wanted to know what was going on. The band kids wanted to protest the final show. I told them the best way to honor me was to have the best performance of their lives and that professionals (which I considered ALL of them when they took the stage) often have life distractions that they must ignore because the music and the show come first.

The night of the final concert was also the night of a scheduled school board meeting IN THE SAME BUILDING. Concert at 6, meeting at 7. (I can’t make this stuff up). An 8th grade clarinet player came to me backstage and told me that the entire band had SAVE MOESCHEN T-shirts on under their concert dress clothes and before the final piece, they had planned to show the shirts to the entire audience and then walk off the stage in protest. I panicked and talked her out of it. I don’t remember a note of the show. I do remember the auditorium being full of old students, some long since graduated and I thought it was very sweet that they came to support me. One of them calmly told me that they had coordinated this effort to go to the school board meeting in protest. There were more than 100 of them. I was blown away and they told me that I should join them at the meeting when the concert was over. I did not. My thinking was that going to the meeting might be taken as a sign of me trying to “show up” those in power who made this decision. As it was, when a Boston news channel came to do a story and things were getting more press, I was already so stressed that I wasn’t eating and barely sleeping. My wife, from time to time, brings up people that I spoke with during these weeks, but I have no memory of any of it. I seemed to have buried it in the trauma. There were 2 nights of concerts and during the second one, I wasn’t given the chance to speak or say goodbye publicly to any of my kids. My supervisor later said “I didn’t ask you if you wanted the microphone because I wasn’t sure you wanted it.” What? Right. Paper cut.

The school year ended. Meetings with lawyers did not. I took no action as there was nothing solid to go after. Same pay, same hours, same benefits. Just a situation that could have been handled better. No apologies from anyone in power, and no going back on the decision. No one in power to this day has ever asked me if I’m ok (I’m not), and the Superintendent is now retired. We spoke one or two times after all of this happened and he never told me the truth about how the decision was made, nor did he ever apologize for how it was handled. Doesn’t matter now. What’s done is done and people in power rarely, if ever, apologize. Paper cuts.

My wonderful mentor, friend, and retired colleague Gerry (he was a hit with the kids), called me and said:

“Look around you at all the love. You are seeing and hearing things that most often get spoken of after we die at our funerals. You get to receive all of this while you’re still here. Look at the thousands of kids lives who you have connected with as the teacher that you are. No one can take that away. Soak it in man, because it doesn’t happen often.”

It’s true. It has not gone unnoticed. I tried and sill try, to give my best to anyone and everyone that crosses my path, in or out of the classroom.

The 2019-20 school year was very difficult, and I faced many discipline problems that I hadn’t before due to large classes and rowdy 8th graders. In February of 2020, I met with my principal and supervisor asking for help. I was told that “these kids would be departing in June, so hang in there.” Paper cut. In March the world ended and the school year went online. The following year (2020-21), we had a “remote school option” and with no one knowing how dangerous the virus was, I chose to teach online with 4 other teachers from my school and we were dubbed “The REMOTE TEAM.” We laughed, cried, Zoomed and tried to figure out how to engage kids while they were home playing video games. Three weeks before the school year started, my supervisor called and told me “to fill out my schedule” I would also be teaching a 90-minute high school block called Music Technology. I hadn’t taught high school of any kind in 20 years. There was no set curriculum and everyone was at home. Paper cut. I taught it and loved it, doing all kinds of stuff with online music software, composing, and researching how music making has changed over the last 100 years. The REMOTE TEAM met every now and then with a supervisor from Woodbury and we were called “ROCKSTARS” even though we weren’t getting an awful lot of kids to actually complete work. It was the weirdest year of my career.

2021-22 was my first “normal” school year since everything had happened. I was moved out of room 130 to a different spot (Room 150 WOOT) and struggled while kids from band came in every now and then to ask for musical help. I didn’t know what to do, so I helped them when I could. It was awkward for me as well as the teacher who took over teaching instruments. The music department became quite fractured, meetings were tense and no one quite knew what to say or how to behave. In front of me, concerts were scheduled, logistics discussed, and not once was I asked for input. Paper cut. I felt like I had died. Room 130 received a full make over. Fresh paint, new chairs and shelves. It was like I was never there. As Doc Brown in Back to the Future says….”Erased….from existence.” Paper cut. I enjoyed the kids last year. I enjoyed my classes but I couldn’t help noticing that something was missing: the passion. The elephant was still in the room as kids asked why I didn’t teach band anymore. I simply told them that “I teach this now.” My answer felt lame every time it left my lips. I was observed again. Still proficient. 27 years in the classroom….I hope so haha.

As most of you know, I am on leave this year while working for a muscular dystrophy non-profit, which is something that I have wanted to do for most of my adult life. Time will tell if I still belong in the classroom, but I have learned that when you try your best to make a difference in the lives of others, what you receive in return heals paper cuts and even sometimes….gaping wounds.

Thank you EVERYONE. For everything. Your words mean the world to me.

Stay safe, stay awesome and stay tuned.