When I mentioned here that I planned on posting daily throughout May again this year, one of my cousins offered up the topic idea of writing "something about the 80s." Okay, it's not the most specific of possible topics, but I appreciated the flexibility it gave me. And right now I have the perfect opening to bring that out as a topic. Here you go, P....
This week is Spirit Week at my school, which amounts to a series of theme days when the kids, as well as some members of the staff, will dress up and have all kinds of good time shenanigans in the process. Now that the annual cavalcade of standardized testing has come and gone and many of us teachers are collectively struggling to keep our students engaged when they can smell summer coming from just a few rows down the calendar, a week-long dress up event seems appropriately timed. The inaugural members of our chapter of the National Elementary Honor Society (or whatever the real name of the organization is; it's new and I haven't quite learned it yet) got together for an after school meeting last week and came up with our Spirit Week themes. They are as such:
Monday - Pajama Day. This one always seems a slightly risky proposition to me, but kids like their pajamas and we survived it without any awkward threadbare flannel incidents, so all's well that ends well.
Tuesday - 80s Day. I'll cover this in a moment.
Wednesday - Mismatched Day. I'd argue wearing mismatched clothing isn't that far out of the norm for many students and that it's done completely intentionally.
Thursday - Historical Character Day. I'm the most anxious about this one, if only to see whether or not my theory pans out that someone will wear a leftover Jack Sparrow Halloween costume and claim to be someone referenced in Treasure Island.
Friday - Sports Jersey Day. Because it might be illegal for a school to arrange themes like this unless at least one day is devoted to sports.
So. 80s Day. Can I first just say that I'm a little bothered how the time period which defined my coming of age has now been reduced to a collection of clichés and caricatures? And if that wasn't bad enough, the kids these days? Ask them what the 80s were like and they'll tell you all you need to know about bell bottoms and disco. And don't get me started on how many people on our staff weren't even teenagers until the 90s hit.
I thought about putting together an iPod playlist to play over my classroom's sound system to celebrate 80s Day, but ultimately decided not to for a handful of reasons: (1) It would be too difficult to review the lyrics to every song and make sure they were 10-and-11-year-old appropriate, (2) it would take me too much time to make sure I was demonstrating for my students to what quality music from the 80s really sounded like, and (3) once I did that, it would only be inevitable for someone to snark off to me about playing "oldies" all day and ask if I had any One Direction or Skrillex. Which I do not.
So my poor students are going to miss out on a day of some honest musical education due to my cautious laziness. But maybe the Def Leppard tour shirt I plan on wearing tomorrow will at least make someone curious enough to do a little investigating on their own.
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