As another year of teaching comes to an end and year 20 steadily approaches, I’ve learned that a single day in the classroom can make you laugh, break your heart, bring tears to your eyes, and stir emotions you never saw coming. As a teacher, all you can really do is “Embrace It All.” I’ve spent the last several years writing and retelling some of those moments in my upcoming self-published book, Embrace It All. This is a preview of one of those stories—a chapter retelling some of the many times I had no choice but to be “Humbled” in the school building.
“Will you be the special guest at the talent show?”
I was asked by the members of MSG. For those who don’t know, MSG stands for Middle School Glory and is a band that consists of several teachers at Downingtown Middle School. They play a few songs every year at the student talent show, and this year they asked me and another history teacher, Mr. Dercole, to be the special guest. The song? “Walk This Way” by Run-DMC and Aerosmith. We’d be Run-DMC.
I normally wouldn’t do something like this, but at the time I was looking to push myself to do new things and gladly accepted the invitation. We cleaned up a few of the lyrics for a school audience and suited up in shell-toe Adidas, black jeans, and Kangol hats. I even had the same glasses as DMC. We knew this was going to be epic.
The performance was kept a secret and everyone thought we were just there to support the students. No one noticed us leave the show during the final student performance and head backstage to change into our outfits.
The group’s lead is an English teacher named Mr. Heggie. He is a great showman and very familiar with being on stage as the lead for his church praise band. Mr. Heggie had the crowd rocking as MSG played their first couple of songs, and I waited anxiously on the side for my big shot.
The band began playing the opening measures of “Walk this Way,” and Mr. Heggie abruptly cut them off.
“Wait, wait, wait! Something is missing,” he shouted.
The crowd looked confused—that was our cue. Mr. D and I ran out in full costume. The gym erupted. We rapped, the band played, and by the end, the crowd was chanting, “MSG.”
It was awesome. So awesome, that it kind of became a regular thing. We would pick a song that had a rap/rock connection or the beat was guitar-heavy and we would perform it with MSG. We did “Lose Yourself,” “Rapper’s Delight,” “U Can’t Touch This,” “Bust a Move,” and “Mo Money, Mo Problems.”
Out of all of those songs we performed, I was most excited about “Mo Money, Mo Problems.” I was in fifth grade when that song broke the airways and can still rap every lyric to this day. So, I couldn’t wait to come on stage and perform one of my all-time favorites.
In the music video, P. Diddy and Mase wear baseball jerseys, so we decided to wear Downingtown baseball Jerseys as our outfits. We asked Mrs. Weichel, the family and consumer science teacher, to sing the hook—and we were ready to go. There wasn’t going to be any grand introduction this time and I told the band I just wanted to come out rapping. I was hoping to do justice to the opening verse that Mase kills.
I remember feeling really good backstage as Mrs. Weichel was introduced and then the guitar started running through the popular rift from the song. She started singing and Mr. Heggie made his way to me standing on the side with the microphone. It was my time. I had been waiting for this since fifth grade and I came out flowing.
“Now, who’s hot, who not
Tell me who rock, who sell out in the stores
You tell me who flopped, who copped the blue drop
Whose jewels got rocks
Who’s mostly Dolce down to the tube sock”
The students cheered when I came out, but then it just got eerily quiet. I kept flowing and felt like I was giving it my all–but something seemed wrong. This was a middle school auditorium, and there were no sound monitors on the floor, so you could never hear yourself well. In the past, I relied on the echo in the auditorium, but this time I couldn’t hear anything.
Then it hit me. My microphone wasn’t working. I tried to mess with the cord as I continued through Mase’s verse, but it didn’t work. No one could hear me. Mr. D came out next and his voice boomed through as he rapped.
“I’m the D to A to the DDY
I know you rather see me die than to see me fly”
The crowd cheered, making it official that my mic wasn’t working.
I had rapped the verse of my life—and no one could hear me. To this day, I still blame Mr. Heggie. He didn’t want me to shine. After the show, students kept telling me they couldn’t hear me. I was already pretty bummed. But eighth-graders don’t do sympathy. One of my students, Kayla, came up, looked me dead in the eye, and said:
“I am so glad your microphone didn’t work, no one wanted to hear you rap.”
Her words were short, simple, and crushing.
PeaceofAB 