Mobile County Honor Choir 2010
I have taught in the Mobile County Public School System off and on for nearly twenty-five years. Like most people, I kind of have a love-hate relationship with it. You know, everybody thinks education is a good thing. We ought to encourage boys and girls to learn to read, write, and do enough math to become a good citizen. There’s a lot of disagreement about the outside details, though. (Do we teach them sex education? How much recreation and play time do they need? What percentage of time should be allotted for sports and the fine arts?) And how many stinkin’ tax dollars are enough to fund it?
My first experience was at Blount High School, which is traditionally an all-black school, not too far from LeFlore, where I teach now. At the time, the Birdie Mae Davis Civil Rights suit had just been settled with the agreement to relocate the entire faculty of Blount (who all happened to be black) to other schools, and re-hire a half-and-half color mix. I was one of the white half.
The Boys After the Concert
It was an interesting year. I was assigned to teach four sections of ninth grade English (try teaching Romeo and Juliet to a bunch of urban kids who spoke a fine version of Ebonics), and one section of chorus. The chorus room was in such bad shape (no heat or air-conditioning, broken windows, mildew everywhere) that I simply moved the piano to my English classroom and entertained the whole English wing during 3rd period chorus. Though my English classes were an exercise in frustration, I discovered that my chorus students loved music and would try anything I handed them. I might still be at Blount today if I hadn’t had two babies in diapers back then, and it absolutely broke my heart to drop them off at daycare every day. My husband and I decided I needed to be home with them, so I taught piano lessons out of my home and did a part-time gig with the Dauphin Way Baptist Church children’s choir program. Good decision, looking back.
The Girls After the Concert
Anyway, by the time I went back to teach full-time after sending Ryan and Hannah off to the Navy and college respectively, my interests had drifted away from music toward creative writing. I needed a full-time job, so I took the Praxis exam and recertified to teach Language Arts. Found a job pretty quickly at Causey Middle School, where my relationship with Mobile County Public Schools took a swing to the dark side. I found myself doing daily battle with adolescent hormones, a portable classroom infested by chronic dust and roaches, a disorganized principal, and an insane amount of paperwork.
Um, no thanks. I finished out the year, then quit my job, enrolled in grad school at the University of South Alabama and taught Freshman Composition as a teaching assistant. Absolutely loved that year hanging out with college students. But with Masters in Creative Writing in hand, I started looking for a high school English job.
Which is how I wound up at LeFlore. They needed a chorus director worse than they needed a reading specialist (school had been in session for 4 weeks already), so the principal asked me if I’d be willing to take the music Praxis and get recertified [yikes, cramming music theory and history for two months!]. But I passed by the grace of God, and here I am doing what I’m born to do.
Rehearsal Day - The Girls
There are frustrating days, of course, but there are days like Monday and Tuesday of this week when I got to watch and listen to nine of my top students experience the joy of participating in County Honor Choir. The public school system has its problems for sure, but there are moments of shining glory when I wouldn’t want to be anyplace else. Imagine 140 gifted teenagers singing Randall Thompson’s Last Words of David…”Cantate Domino” by Hassler…Moses Hogan’s arrangement of “I’m Gonna Sing ‘Til the Spirit Moves in My Heart”…”Salmo 150”, which is a glorious, sort of Spanish-influenced piece in Latin.
Rehearsal Day - The Boys
I wish I could share the music, but these photos will give you a little flavor of the event. Maybe one day I’ll write a book, sort of my Lower Alabama version of Pat Conroy’s magnificent The Water is Wide.
But right now I’m too busy teaching music.
Beth White 