“Turn The Lesson Page”
(a parody of Bob Seger’s “Turn The Page”.” You can see it here.)
Down a long and lonesome hallway
east of Staff Room R*
You can listen to the children
moanin’ out from someone’s room
You can think about the students
or the class you had the day before
But your thoughts will soon be wandering
the way they always do
When you’re teaching sixty minutes
and there’s way too much to do
And you don’t feel much like painting
you just wish the class was through
Here I am
In the front again
There I am
Out on the stage
Here I go
Teaching art again
There I go
Turn the lesson page
When you walk into an art classroom
strung out from first grade
And you feel the eyes upon you
as you’re shakin’ off the clay
You pretend it doesn’t bother you
but you just want to go home and bathe
Sometimes you can’t hear ’em talk
mostly though you can
All the same old cliches
Starry Night by Vincent Van
You always seem outnumbered
you need to make a stand
Here I am
In the front again
There I am
Out on the stage
Here I go
Teaching art again
There I go
Turn the lesson page
Up there in the spotlight
you’re teaching every day
Every ounce of energy
you feel it sucked away
As the sweat pours out your body
like the many words you say
Later in the evening
as you lie awake in bed
With the echoes of the Kindergartners
ringin’ in your head
You pound the day’s last whiskey shot**
remembering what they said
Here I am
In the front again
There I am
Out on the stage
Here I go
Teaching art again
There I go
Turn the lesson page
Here I am
In the front again
There I am
Out on the stage
Here I go
Teaching art again
There I go
Turn the lesson page
* This room doesn’t actually exist, to my knowledge. Who knows, maybe it does. I don’t have time to visit staff rooms.
** I know everyone’s beverage of choice after a long hard day is wine. I’m a whiskey girl. Get over it.
me was given by one of my education professors. “Buy your beer in the next town over,” he said. You know, lest you run into your students’ parents and they think of you as a good-for-nothing degenerate, a bad role model and someone who is incapable of educating their child. Let’s ignore the case of Mich Ultra in their cart though, because that’s different. They’re not teachers. And so I did. I took extreme measures to ensure that I never purchased a six-pack of the refreshingly thirst-quenching beverage that I was legally permitted to buy in any store that I felt my students’ parents would frequent. Evidently, all of my students must have teachers for parents because we are all shopping in the next town over.
Art Teachers Hate Glitter 