Some Days Are Like That

[bloodyrosemccoy]

One of today's school group was a perfect storm of Failing To Follow Instructions. Over the course of one show, this single school managed the following:

1. The teachers failed to account for all their kids.
2. They rectified this by waiting until I was about to start the presentation, then propping open the theater door and hollering to the three straggling kids from the doorway.
3. A chaperone showed up late, while I was already giving my night sky presentation.
4. After being expressly told by the ushers, who kindly let her in late, to sit in the front and not use a flashlight, this chaperone turned on her phone's flashlight, lighting up my night sky.
5. She then stopped dead, right in the front of the theater, and gawped at the sky with her phone light on, and ignored my repeated requests to "please keep the lights off."
6. When I said, "Folks, it seems like not everyone is seated. I'm going to turn up the lights just a little to allow them to find their seats," she continued to stand there gaping as the red lights came up. Even as I went on with "So we'll start again WHEN EVERYONE IS SEATED. PLEASE TAKE YOUR SEATS AS SOON AS POSSIBLE," this chaperone continued to stand there until someone went to get her and escort her to the seat that was, objectively, the farthest possible seat from the door.
7. At the end, I always go down to the theater to take questions while they exit. "Let's have the back row stand up first, exit this way, and have the next row follow them," I said, and immediately everyone in the theater tried to exit at the same time. I repeated myself like three times, but they continued to just charge blindly for the door.

It was amazing. I've never had a school that clueless. Is it the anarchy of the end of the year at work? Is this school just full of people who don't listen? Or was it me?

I don't know, but I'm extremely put out by this school, because I got sniped at by the next dome shift for running over time because this damn school was too incompetent to watch a fucking show. It was a very trying day.

Hoping next week is less exasperating. In the meantime, hey school--I have a video for you to watch.

Comments

[dark-phoenix54.livejournal.com]

With adults like that, I hate to think how the kids are going to turn out!

[dinogrrl.livejournal.com]

Oh, one of THOSE groups.
Whenever I had to lead tours with groups like that, I basically just gave up trying to herd cats. Those who actually wanted the tour would follow and listen to me, and those who didn't, or weren't able to follow instructions, well...sucks to be them.
Though I guess I wasn't doing tours in darkened theaters so I probably had more leeway for working around rules-breakers (shining cell phones aren't a problem, for example).

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it's more difficult to just let the goofs goof off when it's in a theater.

[daiq.livejournal.com]

As a teacher, i apologise for those teachers! Some people are just freaking useless - i used to work as a stage manager for a show involving a cast of almost 6000 school kids each year and every year the team would swap stories about idiot teachers with primary kids (and it was almost always the primary teachers) who would just totally fook it up! My personal favourite was the teacher who was explicitly told multiple times that due to safety issues (we had a stage truck coming off the stage!) that she could NOT bring her five 5 year olds into the tunnel until i came to escort them! She almost got those kids killed by the stage truck and then made a complaint about me!

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

It's always fascinating when people just DON'T GET THINGS. I'm glad nobody was hurt despite that teacher's obtuseness!

[westrider.livejournal.com]

When I was getting my Teacher's Certificate, I noticed that there was a sub-group, almost entirely in the Elementary Education section, who were going into working with kids because they were desperately trying to stay in their own childhood. I wouldn't be surprised if there's a lot of overlap between that group and the ones who can't maintain get it together like this.

[daiq.livejournal.com]

I hear you!

My other favourite one was, i had a spiel i had to give groups before they came into the Tunnel the first time (and would do it every single show for the teacher's benefits). I was running Tunnel One, and always started my spiel with "Hey hey, welcome to Tunnel Win!" (You know because it was puny and the kids loved it) and I have yet another primary teacher go into MELTDOWN because they were in the wrong place, they were supposed to be in Tunnel One, not Tunnel Win and now they didn't know where to go etc etc. The kids were just looking at their teacher with the same o.O face that I was making. As a high school teacher I just don't get it!