Kanye West, F-words & Me

I just don’t know when it happened.

Somewhere along the way I went from somewhat of a free-spirit-anything-goes type of person to a harrumphing schoolmarm. And let me just say I’m about as comfortable with that characterization as I am with wearing black spandex. (Trust me, my friends, that is an image we can all do without.)

I arrived at this epiphany when I was searching for music to play during my classroom bellringer activity. Although I gravitate toward what’s commonly referred to as alternative music or good ol’ fashion rock’n’roll, I do like to mix it up a bit and throw in other kinds of music. But the more I surfed the music spectrum, the more lost I felt. And the more I listened, the more appalled I became–and this from someone who camped out for the Rolling Stones and actually shed a tear when Abbie Hoffman and Hunter S. Thompson died.

CONFESSION: I was wanting to play my I’m-Still-Hip-card by putting on “Stronger” by Kanye West. After all, the song gets loads of air play on mainstream radio…

“N-n-now th-that that don't kill me Can only make me stronger I need you to hurry up now Cause I can't wait much longer I know I got to be right now Cause I can't get much wronger Man I been waitin' all night now That's how long I've been on ya…”

It’s a catchy little ditty…And when the song comes on the radio, I, my friends, can belt the words out as I fly down the freeway in my Maserati. OK, OK… so it’s really a trusty blue mini-van, but I do know the words… Are you happy now? That little revelation has probably ruined the song forever among the teen angst crowd…

OK back to the issue here…Even if you don’t dismiss almost an entire genre of songs because of their misogynistic nature, you’ve got to rule them out because of those special little words that will get you fired if you say–or sing–them in a public classroom–“Hails Bails” as my students would say– make that in any classroom. And trust me, the Kanye song has quite a few of those special words. (In fact, I’m stashing those lyrics in my “Things that will get you fired” folder.

And, yes, I’ve considered playing the “clean” radio versions, but does that make them safe? Can we excuse the overall content of the song? Some of the lyrics are so suggestive, I’m not sure exactly what it is they’re suggesting. I know, pathetic, isn’t it? (Me and urbandictionary.com have spent a lot of quality time together lately.)

So after stashing Kanye in my Things folder, I thought I was safe with Justin Timberlake’s SexyBack.

No…There go those words again and there they go into the Things folder.

OK, so then, I thought I was safe with Carrie Underwood’s “Before He Cheats,” but no.

Keying cars, smashing headlights and slashing tires…not a good idea in a zero tolerance society.

So…OK…I thought let’s just go way back and find a classic…Hmmmmm, how ’bout those Rolling Stones?… “Start Me Up…” Don’t they play that at practically every sporting event? “If you start me up, I’ll never stop. I’ve been running hot…You make…"

Oh but there’s that line… Jeez Louise…… another good idea gone bad and into the Things folder…but wait… there’s hope… I’ll just make up my own version…

Justin may have brought SexyBack, but I’ll just bring the f-word back…

…as in F-U-N-N-Y…Hails Bails, did you really thing I meant the other word?

We’re talking funny as in FunnyBack…So take this haters…drum roll pah-leese… To the tune of SexyBack… (Do you think they’ll pull my I’m-Still-Hip card?)

(Warning: My daughter did run screaming from the room at this point. But she did not, I repeat, set her hair on fire.)


FunnyBack

I’m bringin’ funny back
Them other teachers don’t know how to laugh
They think I’m funny, glad you got my back
Let’s laugh aloud… No, I’m not smokin’ crack

Take ’em to the blog

Giggle, babe
You see the humor
Baby, laugh your way
It’s mybellringers and I’m here to stay
It’s just that no one makes us laugh this way

Take it to the chorus

Come here now, go ’head be bloggin’ it
Come to the site, go ’head be bloggin’ it
VIP
Go ’head be bloggin’ it
Blogs on me
Go ’head be bloggin’ it
Lemme see what you’re laughin’ with
Go ’head be bloggin’ it
Look at those posts
Go ’head be bloggin’ it
Ya make me smile
Go ’head be bloggin’ it
Get your funny on
Go ’head be bloggin’ it
Get your funny on
Go ’head be bloggin’ it
Get your funny on
Go ’head be bloggin’ it
Get your funny on
Go ’head be bloggin’ it
Get your funny on
Go ’head be bloggin’ it
Get your funny on
Go ’head be bloggin’ it
Get your funny on

I’m bringin’ funny back
Them other teachers don’t know how to act
Come on and giggle bout the things you lack
You’re laughin’ it up and we gotta post it fast

Take it to the blog

Giggle babe
You see the humor
Baby, laugh your way
It’s mybellringers and I’m here to stay
It’s just that no one makes us laugh this way

Take it to the chorus

In the beginning…my first blog entry

I doubt that I would have survived these 20-plus years as a public high school teacher if each and every day I didn’t ponder, “Is this the day?” You know that day–The Day to actually set your hair on fire and run screaming from the classroom. That day.

And now that I am just about to start my third year at my still-new-to-me school district in my new facilities, the irony is not lost on me that my classroom door is just mere feet from the emergency exit to the parking lot. So, you see, I really could set my hair on fire, run out the door, hop in my trusty blue mini-van and leave in a puff of smoke. If you love that kind of twisted humor, then I think you’ll like reading this blog.

Now that school is gearing up, I’m trying to shift my focus back to the classroom and my incoming students. I must say this focusing thing seems to get a bit more difficult each year. I know I’m not the only one. Kids have problems, too. Can’t you just hear the pens scribbling across prescription pads dispensing medication to treat ADD and ADHD in an attempt to find a magic pill to focus kids back on education? While I have no quick fix solution, sometimes I believe we should remember a simpler time when all a teacher had to do to focus students was to pop a bell ringer – an instructive little ditty that required no hands-on teaching from the instructor–on the overhead. Ah, those were the days, when kids labored over the day’s journal entry, math problem or some other bell ringer, while teachers throughout the school had a small, but important block of time to take care of things from attendance to handing back papers to recording grades.

My bell ringers always provide a small window of opportunity for me to exhale or inhale (depending on whether hyperventilation was in order for the day). Bell ringers also gave me a chance to survey the classroom scene and ponder whether this was, you know, “The Day.

Educational experts (defined as anyone and everyone who has ever sat in a classroom) like to ponder, too, and whine about the problems facing our public school system. They offer a wide array of this and that, believing they have the perfect solution to the problem du jour.

But I have a secret: perhaps instead of dissecting our educational system, we should just celebrate our successes, laugh at our shortcomings and learn from our mistakes and failures. This blog, Bell Ringers, is intended to provide stories from the trenches of more than two decades of classroom experience, three school districts, eight principals, four superintendents and hundreds of children. I’d also like to hear your stories, too, because we all need to celebrate, laugh and learn together.

To get us started, here’s one of my favorites: In my old school, I had just completed my allotted 20-minute lunch block with my lunch-bunch buddies when one of them — a social studies teacher — started talking about her morning class. She was lecturing about how prices have increased over the years. She used stockings as an example, except she used the word “hose.”

“I was telling the class about how the cost of hose had risen over the years, and I didn’t understand why most of the class was giggling,” she told us, “until my student teacher told me the class thought I was saying ‘ho’s’ as in prostitutes instead of nylons.”

Unfazed, she told the class it didn’t really matter which ones she was talking about — the point being that both have increased in price through the years.

Now, there’s a teacher for you, as well as a mini-lesson plan for laughter and learning – two things we certainly could use more of. Hopefully, you will find both here, and we can all survive another day.

And, should we fail? Well, we can always set our hair on fire and run screaming from the building.