I had no idea that this topic would garner so much positive feedback from you, loyal readers. It is because of your comments and emails that I present this week, a second installment of a dank, mossy, cold, dark and gray vault: the inside of my brain. Here there be dragons!
As most of you know, I am now doing non-profit work with individuals living with muscular dystrophy and I love it. I have transferred my advanced and broken sense of humor from the world of teaching adolescent kids (teaching adolescents might be an oxymoron), to my work with this serious health condition. In short, like teaching, I take the subject matter and the people seriously, but I try not to take myself too seriously. Humor has always been my shield that helps me power through this life.
I have also begun working as an instructional coach with teachers in Arizona through a company called Ribbit learning. I love their message and their mission, and I am trying to help the next generation of educators find their way in a profession that is becoming more challenging by the minute.
I am currently working with a young man who recently taught a semester of music to little kids and is now being tasked to teach middle school music for the rest of the year. We spoke the other day about preparing lessons that meet the kids on their turf and how to keep them engaged. This young man asked me what my most tried and true method was to foster engagement over an extended period of time. Though the answer to this question will vary from teacher to teacher, I didn’t even pause: HUMOR was my answer. He asked me to elaborate, which led me to thin about some stuff that I used to do, often on the fly, to keep the kids engaged. I was always serious about music making, and the subject of this wonderful art, but I tried to instill in the kids, that it’s ok to mess up, and, at the same time, to not take yourself too seriously. Hey….it’s only school, it’s not life right? It’s ok to be silly with yourself.
Anyway, here are a few from my classroom vault:
Once upon a time in my classroom if/when a kid was being totally obnoxious:
Me: “Ok, hold up…who would like to go on a dangerous mission?”
Class: hands raised and a lot of strange noises to go with the hands in case I am not watching…I am hearing…”Moeschen, Moeschen….please! Me! Me, over here, Moeschen MOE-SCHENNNN.”
Me: (picking the kid who obviously needs a break, since he is totally disruptive. Yes, 99 times out of 100 it was a boy.) “OK, Joey…I need you to take a walk. I need you to take this blue bucket here from behind my desk and go down and see Mr. Natoli in tech. ed. The bucket IS your hall pass, so be careful and don’t swing it around and hurt yourself.”
Kid: “Wait, how is this dangerous?”
Class: laughter
Me: “It’s not dangerous until the bucket is full. Now listen. Mr. Natoli has a class, so don’t go barging in there. Knock quietly and when he lets you in, tell him that Mr. Moeschen needs a bucket of steam.”
Kid: (confused) “Um. ok, but wait. What?”
Class: laughter and puzzlement
Me: “Dude, just go. Mr. Natoli will take care of it. Now the dangerous part is that the steam is hot, because it’s steam….right class? So BE CAREFUL.”
Kid: Takes blue bucket and attempts to leave the room.
Me: “Joe….wait…..I almost forgot the most important part. When you come back, you have to hold the bucket upside down. VERY CRUCIAL young man. VERY, VERY CRUCIAL.”
Kid: (looks at bucket then at me) “Wait. Why?”
Me: “Because I don’t want the steam to evaporate on the way back. Dude, don’t you pay attention in science class?”
Class: (laughing as Joey leaves) “Moeschen, are you serious? Why do we need steam?”
Me: (returning to the lesson) “Don’t worry about it. It’s for next period.”
The best part of this is that I did it more than once with different classes and different years, and when the tech. ed teacher caught on, he would play along and go to some fake water valve behind a radiator somewhere and pretend to fill the bucket. He would then instruct the kid to carry it back slowly, and upside down. When the kid came back to class, I would have him place it gently, face down on the floor behind my desk. I always made sure the bucket wasn’t too hot and the kid, needing a walk, would usually calm down for the rest of the period. Of course, the tech. ed teacher would also sometimes send a kid TO the band room asking if I could let them borrow the 2-sided triangle from the percussion section….
Other iterations of the same joke included: sending a kid to get a left handed wrench, or left handed screwdriver…you get the idea.
Here’s another one that lasted weeks…..
My classroom led to a back hallway behind the gym, which led to an outside door, which led to a dumpster site. Therefore, there was always some treasure along the wall in that back hallway that could be used to have a little fun now and then. Extra chairs that were not broken could be placed in random classrooms after school, small wooden delivery pallets would wind up in an upstairs hallway against a row of lockers with a sign saying “see the office before removing” and things of that nature. Then there were the math books.
An entire set of 8th grade math books. At least 60 of these out of date textbooks were set to be recycled. I think this edition dated back to Pythagorus, and so no one was going to miss them. This gave me a fun idea to run with. I always had a group of band kids that ate lunch in my room. I had each kid take a stack of 10-12 books to classrooms that were empty while the teachers were also eating lunch. I simply put a post-it note on top of each stack that read: “Here are the books that you requested for your classroom project.”
Most people were baffled, emails addressed to “all staff” were circulated and I stayed quiet…. but a few staff caught on to the joke and simply sent the books to somewhere else’s classroom with new post-it notes. The book train went on for weeks and some of the kids who were in on it began asking the teachers if they had any math books….since no kid can keep a secret, the prank was eventually traced to me, but not before we had many laughs.
Finally, there was always the good old fashioned walk around that I used to do when I had a free period. I would visit other classrooms and participate in lessons, call out vocab. words on a spelling test, or ask to be part of a science experiment. Great fun….but nothing was as awesome than on a day when it began to snow.
I would usually go to my friend Mark’s class and quietly open the door sometime around lunch. I would then whisper to Mark that I had heard that the office had made the call for early student dismissal due to snow….and then I would shut the door as 25 kids erupted and cheered, causing Mark to lose all control of the class. Of course there WAS no message from the office, but now it was his problem to get his kids to believe that I was lying.
I also would cruise into a teacher’s room where the staff member was clearly younger than me and say to the kids: “Hey guys, do you know that I had Mrs. Morris when I was a student? She was my favorite teacher of all time and you guys are lucky to have her!” With a straight face, I would watch the kids try to do the mental math and cackle at their confused expressions. Brilliant.
Yes. We had a lot of laughs. We took the big picture seriously and made a lot of great music, but we also enjoyed the times of pranking and foolishness, because, hey…..it’s only middle school. Who wants a cupcake? Oreos anyone? Dress up the human skeleton in science with winter gear and roll him into the hallway with a sign that named him SLIM? You bet.
Stay awesome, stay safe, and stay tuned for Volume III where I tell you about my teaching partner putting a dead fish in my desk and how I didn’t know it was there for DAYS until the smell got out of control…..Good times, good times.
Patrick moeschen 
Gre