I was listening to NPR today (it is somewhat depressing for me to think that at my age, I consider commercial radio to be crap and am tuning to NPR, the old people’s station.) and caught an All Things Considered piece on “Big Picture Schools.” While the story isn’t specifically arts management connected, it is related to something arts people know about–passion.

As you might imagine, the schools, the flagship of which is in Providence, R.I., are alternative high schools where the class size ratio is 15:1. The surpring thing is though that they are wildly successful running only on the same public funding that every other school gets and running admissions on a lottery system. The criticism of most alternative schools is that they are tuition based and that they can pick and choose to admit the best and brightest insuring high test scores.

The Met School in Providence has 65% of its students qualifying for free/reduced lunch. They may be best and brightest, but it isn’t immediately apparent. One student interviewed admitted she initially acted out and hid under desks because she didn’t know how to cope with the transition from “regular school.”

Students are allowed to follow their passions and do internships two days a week with different organizations whose work they believe they are interested in. The teachers work with the students and internship sites to answer that age old protest–“I am never going to have to use this in the real world” by emphasizing the applications of math, science, etc.

Every 9 weeks the students have to participate in a portfoilo review of materials that relate to what they have learned and their internship experience. The evaluation is gradeless. The teachers provide lengthy written feedback on a number of elements, including the student’s development.

The results are impressive. 100% are accepted to college, 85% choose to go, 75% graduate a post secondary program.(The national rate is 6% chance of graduating college if you come from low income setting regardless of race.) Their placement on standardized tests improves every year. They have an extremely low rate of absence, a high rate of parental involvement and the second lowest percentage of students reporting that someone tried to sell them drugs in school in the state.

The thing that really stuck with me was a comment co-founder Dennis Littky made in one of the audio extras NPR provided on their website. He talked about the fact that even in the good schools, the kids who do well may just have learned how to play the game. How to generate the product that will get them a good grade. In many cases, they are more excited about the afterschool activities than what they are doing during the school day.

Littky posits that if you asked the students who did well if they were passionate about learning, they would probably say no for the most part except for a few subjects they might have been particularly interested in.

I can relate to all this to a great degree. I can point to papers I wrote in high school and college that I knew would fit the criteria for getting a good grade and nothing more. There were classes where I got a C on the first test and then all As because I figured out what type of facts were important to study.

On the other hand, if there was ever an open ended option for a paper or an essay to take what I learned and say what happened next or write in the style of time, etc, I always took that option. It was chancier than giving 3 examples of irony, but much more exciting, even in a timed testing environment.

I still have the paper I wrote almost 20 years ago in a freshman seminar where I extended Homer’s Odyssey. “The grammatical errors are legion” the professor wrote. But he was very impressed with my ability to passably mimic Homer’s translated writing style. The second most memorable B I have ever gotten. I haven’t looked at the paper in years, and I still remember the comments and the grade.

My most memorable B was on a paper where, inspired by Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, I argued against grades and for extensive commentary on papers. The professor took me at my word and didn’t grade the paper but invited me to her office to discuss the paper further. She had to give me a grade and said she would be bound totally by whatever grade I assigned it after reflecting on her comments. I gave myself the B.

It is this sort of fair treatment that set me up for disappointment. I minored in education and was certified to teach in NY. I left for grad school soon after but ended up teaching in college. Most of my classes were great, but the Theatre Appreciation class with 400 students that thought it an easy A killed me a bit inside. (You think my theatre horror stories are bad. Don’t get me started on teaching.) Not only the talking and disrespect during class, but the calls from parents because their kids were failing a course they weren’t showing up for! Argghhh!

If schools like this one keep popping up and also produce students adept in subject areas standardized tests don’t examine like social sciences, it might renew my idealism about what teaching and learning can be.

I had a topic for today, but decided to take a different tack. I thought I would have a little reader participation.

If you have ever had a performance before a live audience (or even had patrons come to an art gallery or museum) you have some horror story that you just know you want to share to commiserate with other arts folks who can empathize with you.

Here is your chance, send me your tales (or just add them to the entry by clicking the comments link below) and I will feature them here.

To get things started, I will offer up a couple of my own.

I was running the light board for a production of Vaclav Havel’s Faust play, Temptation. The theatre had a flexible seating configuration so the set of the play was on two levels- the stage and then on the floor in front of the proscenium. The director asked that we remove the guard rails along the front of the seating risers so there would be nothing between the first row and the action but a few feet.

In the middle of the show, a gentleman gets up from the front row, walks on to the playing area, touches one of the actors on the shoulder and says “Excuse me, son.” Thinking that there might be a medical emergency, I prepare to bring the lights up and the stage manager starts to alert the backstage crew that they may have to call an ambulance.

The guy turns to the audience and says “I was once an alcoholic and had back problems until I accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior and I suggest you do the same,” and then walks quickly out of the theatre while everyone sits there stunned for a moment. (Turns out he did that sort of thing all over town and not because Faust and the Devil were on stage.)

The actors were thrown off and couldn’t remember the lines. Because the actors were on the floor 20 feet out in front of the proscenium, there was no way for the stage crew to feed them lines prompted by the stage manager’s frantic hissing over the communications system.

For some reason, the department chair pro-tem’s girlfriend ended up feeding them the correct line from the audience and the show went on.

I have a bunch of these, but here is one more of my favorites.

We were doing a concert at a former workplace with a female vocalist of some renown. A woman and her boyfriend came in the lobby and even from 15 feet away, I could immediately smell the alcohol. The audiences for our shows were really well behaved so all I did was keep an eye on them. The woman was holding a painting that she wanted to give the performer. This is probably what caused me to miss whatever bottle of alcohol they had secreted upon themselves because they weren’t any more sober at the end of the show.

Artists usually come down to the lobby to see their fans shortly after a performance. However, since Sony had offices nearby, representatives of the performer’s label came to meet her and she stayed in her dressing room.

The drunken woman had approached the stage handed the painting up to the performer at the end of the show. However, she wanted a picture of the singer with herself and the painting. She hadn’t really been annoying so a half-hour after the show ended, I sent the security guy home because there were only about 6-10 fans lingering and I figured I could keep an eye on things.

Boy, was I wrong.

About five minutes later, the drunken couple tries to sneak around the stage door. I send them back the front of the theatre. The rest of the evening is spent with her edging toward the stage door while I am distracted and me glaring/chasing her back.

Finally, I warn the road manager that there might be a stalking situation arising. He pooh-poohs me saying that the singer’s music touches people in such a way that they feel they have an intimate personal connection with her. I don’t chase them away as I had planned.

The drunken couple finally loudly declares that they have waited long enough and walk away down the sidewalk. I suspiciously watch them until they get around the corner. Then I take care of a few things and go back outside to breath in the lovely fresh autumn night air.

It is at this point I hear the drunken shuffling through the leaves made by the couple trying to sneak around the far side of the theatre. I head around to the backstage by the faster route and get there just in time to see the woman jump out from behind a car and scream BOO! at the drummer.

It is at this point the road manager begins to reconsider his pooh-poohing. However, the beneficent performer chose that moment to descend and agree to a photo while I gave a smoldering glare at the couple. Other well-behaved fans came out of the lobby to shower praise on the performance and all ended well.

But the story doesn’t end there!

A year or so after, I just happen to be the one who picks up the phone. The drunken woman has lost the photo and wants us to give her the performer’s address so she can get another one taken of the two of them with her painting.

Good Lord!

So again—lemme share your favorite stories from the trenches.