A DM appeared in Facebook Messenger just hours after I accepted his friend request. He had written a long apology, and still addressed me as Mrs. J, even though he was 28 or 30 now.
As I scanned my brain for an image of his face, hundreds of others flooded back. I taught high school choir for over 30 years, meeting with 400 kids every day. I conjured an image I believed was accurate — the boys were more memorable, if only because they were fewer and their behavior was typically more outrageous.
Most boys started in Baritone Chorale. Despite its fancy name, it teemed with freshmen and sophomores, ranging in size from 4 feet, 10 inches to 6 feet, 5 inches tall. A few angelic sopranos still clung to their childhood voices. Some navigated a newly found basso. Most wandered, lost and pitchless, in a weedy baritone swamp.
The class met during third period, every day, from 9:28 a.m. to 10:12 a.m. I remember because I checked the clock a million times — as much as I liked those boys, and enjoyed the challenge, they were squirrelly, rarely sang in tune all at once, and smelled liked sweaty Nikes. The average size of my classes was 85 students.
I co-taught with another choir teacher, and we busied ourselves conducting, playing piano accompaniments, taking attendance, and passing out music. Meanwhile, the boys busied themselves inventing gags and performing tomfoolery.
In “We Wish You a Merry Christmas,” they strung out the “s” to sound like a chorus of snakes. In “A Ceremony of Carols,” they changed “martial ensigns” to “masturbations.” Surreptitiously, they inflicted so much pain on each other, I delivered yearly lectures on the dangers of sack taps and titty twisters.
Still, Baritone Chorale made me proud. The class was filled with JV football players, students with disabilities, and student senate officers. Kids who walked and kids who used wheelchairs. Kids who needed a fine arts credit and kids who wanted to be like their guitar-strumming dads. And every holiday, when I allowed them to sing one song of their choice, they always picked “The Christmas Shoes,” in which a young boy tries to buy a pair of shoes for his dying mama.
Sometimes, Baritone Chorale boys advanced to Concert Choir where they sang serious choral literature. Top singers were often top academic students too, headed for careers in medicine, business or technology. But if their parents bred smarts, they also hatched hubris. After a few private voice lessons, some teenagers proclaimed themselves experts.
“Mrs. J, you’re counting that rhythm wrong.” Or, “My voice teacher says the Italian ‘a’ is pronounced like ‘father.’” I mostly smiled and refrained from pointing out that the person in the room with a master’s degree might know something. I counted on them to grow up — and to grow out of their impudence. I was pretty sure most of them would.
The DM apology proved me correct. I don’t remember the sins of this man who messaged me. Did he skip class? Show up drunk? Spew profanity? More than a few did all those things — plus talk incessantly, pass notes, and chew gum (which was forbidden while singing). He didn’t name his offense other than to express regret for “how I behaved at the end of my high school career in choir class.”
Instead, I remember 400 kids cradling flameless candles at a Christmas concert. I remember a full house, audience on their feet, at a curtain call on opening night. I remember the mother who told me, tears streaming, that she had never before heard her son’s solo singing voice.
Is that rosy retrospection? Maybe.
Many days, I arrived before 7 a.m. for coaching sessions, skipped lunch to read emails, and after a late rehearsal, locked the doors at 10 p.m. During those hours, I met with five different choirs, appeased disgruntled parents, entered grades in the computer, wrote program notes for concerts, and mopped up grit after dance rehearsals. I coped with a tiny, ill-equipped theater, and coordinated ticket sales and fundraising because the school didn’t budget for musical theater shows. And when dressing rooms were too small and the orchestra played in the wings because we had no pit, I tried to avoid resentment, because at the other end of campus was a brand-new indoor hockey rink, and a football field with luxury boxes. I’m sure it’s even more challenging for teachers today, with new rules on signage, more and more banned books, decreased funding, and a heightened focus on standardized tests.
Still, when I was eligible to retire at 55, I wasn’t ready to give up my boys’ barbershop quartets, my sopranos nailing an aria at college auditions, or the faces of 50 kids when they see Times Square for the first time, and then perch, edge-of-the-seat, as the curtain goes up for a Broadway show. I also needed more years of learning — from my students — how to set goals, persist, persevere, see magic on every stage, and glitter in every song.
When I was still teaching, former students would return to attend a concert or production. After the closing number, they would gather in my office, looking like adults instead of children, a bit critical of the latest crop of musicians, and arrogant about their own, long-ago, flawless performances.
One night, a boy/man waited for his friends to disburse. Over-confident as a 16-year-old, that evening he avoided eye contact and shuffled his feet. “I know I was an asshole,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
In the online message I received, my former student professed respect and appreciation. He said, “I was a lost kid trying to find my way and was so confused with life.” Couldn’t that describe almost anyone? Couldn’t that describe me as a kid? Should I have written those words to my own former teachers?
I never asked for apologies. I knew what I was in for — teenagers with hormones raging, brains inchoate. I never expected perfection. I made plenty of mistakes myself.
But reading his apology, I realized he sent a message any teacher should honor — not because we covet the beg-pardon, but because someone we cared about, in whose growth we invested time, commitment and effort, came of age and found a steady cadence.
Should I have said, “Thank you”?
I did, and added, “I can only hope I played a small part in your journey.”
Nancy Jorgensen is a Wisconsin-based writer, educator and collaborative pianist. Her most recent book is a middle-grade sports biography, “Gwen Jorgensen: USA’s First Olympic Gold Medal Triathlete” (Meyer & Meyer). Her essays have appeared in Ms. Magazine, The Offing, River Teeth, Wisconsin Public Radio, Cheap Pop and elsewhere. Find out more about her at NancyJorgensen.weebly.com and follow her on Instagram @NancJoe.
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