#spoofschool

And finally, in my last year at good old Chavez Prep, I bid (or is it bade?) farewell to 770 Kenyon Street with these last 2 academic anthems. (You can see this full medley and the full individual videos on YouTube on the Spoof School and Chavez Prep channels, respectively.) The first was "Top Scores", a spoof of "Tom Ford" by Jay-Z. The second was "Eagles", a spoof of "Royals" by Lorde, which was written by me and sung by my darling student Rahel Mideska (not shown in the video), who was a 9th grader at the time and just recently finished high school! Without either of us knowing it, Rahel was crucial to the development of #spoofschool . When I was her 8th grade science teacher, we would play a game called Skituations to get ready for my tests. Students could review the test material in any creative way they wanted to, including making up games, skits, arts & crafts, songs, etc. Rahel, who idolized Adele, would write these brilliant science spoofs and sing them at the end of class, blowing us all away. I'll never forget the "Rolling In The Deep" parody she wrote about ionic and covalent bonds. "We could have had a bond, but you repelled meeeeeee!" #tomford #jayz @jayz #lorde @lordemusic #royals #spoof #parody #educationalspoof #educationalparody #educationalrap (DM me NOW to find out how to book a @spoofschool assembly or residency at your school! (at Cesar Chavez Public Charter School)

(Follow @spoofschool for more of my teaching artist adventures!) . . . I would be lying if I said that every step of my journey as a teaching artist has been easy. I started out as the golden child, the first round draft pick, winner of a Teaching Artist Institute Fellowship, rah, rah, rah. . . . Then I got my first bad evaluation. "His whole assembly focused on our differences. He joked about McDonald's when a lot of our students can only afford to eat there. He joked about the President and we try to keep politics out of our school. Why was he singing about stealing cars? And what is CRUNK? Isn't that an offensive term?" . . . I took my lumps. I learned from them. I made adjustments. And I moved on. . . . Then I got my first microaggression: an evaluation that said my assembly was great but I was a problem. I won't even get into that one. Quite frankly, I think it was the skin I'm in. . . . When you're trying something new and different, not everyone will get it or get with it. But I believe in #SpoofSchool and #CrunkAcademy . I've seen the great things they can do in schools. The spirit of creative joy that makes learning adventurous, indelible and less like work. And assemblies like the one I just had help bolster that belief. . . . We sang. We danced. We joked. We laughed. And oh yeah, we learned. . . . Thank you for rocking with me, Sandymount. I'll be back.

Peace to Professor April for the more than thorough introduction! It was an honor to return to the Tidewater Literary Festival. Thank you to the students for rocking with my colorful @spoofschool story, to the festival committee, to Chuck (boxing coach and audio-video tech to the stars), Sunny (head of the student center who warmly and thoroughly reminded me that I'm walking in my purpose), and especially Joe who went out of his way to accommodate me. I love you all and look forward to a long and positive relationship! @tccva #spoofschool #SpoofSchool #CrunkAcademy #crunk #crunkacademy #getcrunk #brokeballer (at Tidewater Community College, Portsmouth Campus)

Getting ready to get it on! #CrunkAcademy #SpoofSchool @tccva (at TCC Portsmouth Campus Student Activities)

Getting ready to get it on! #CrunkAcademy #SpoofSchool @tccva (at TCC Portsmouth Campus Student Activities)

"I just wanna really really really wanna decompose / I already got two parts that came from a whole / I just wanna break up this 6 into two 3's if I can / When I'm finished, I'm so happy I could dance / Ya, ya, ya! / All I ever wanna do is decomposing!" This spoof of "Rolex" by Ayo & Teo is one of five that I helped three kindergarten classes create today at Brooklyn Park Elementary. Other songs spoofed were "Wrecking Ball" by Miley Cyrus, "Help Me Help You" by Logan Paul, "Treat You Better" by Shawn Mendes, and "Whip It Nae Nae" by Silento. We had a ball! Thank you, Ms. Lowman, Ms. Smith, and Mrs. Banks, and thank you to Young Audiences of Maryland for bringing us together! @arts4learning #SpoofSchool (Follow my teaching artist adventures on Instagram at @spoofschool !) (at Brooklyn Park, Maryland)

Your alarm clock goes off. You maul it back into silence, roll over, kiss your lover's cheek. You groggily (excuse my adverb, writing teachers) shuffle your way to the kitchen to start a cup of coffee, maybe another for your aforementioned lover. You step outside to get the paper, happy to live in peaceful suburbia where the paper is still delivered. And you see this masked mischief-maker trooping up your block. As Dennis Hopper asked in that classic piece of cinema called Speed: "WHAT do you do?" Or, better still, as Sean Connery put it in that classic foray of film called The Untouchables: "WHAT are you prepared to do? Huh?!" #SpoofSchool #CrunkAcademy What (at Baltimore County, Maryland)

So this morning's @spoofschool teaching arts adventures involved catching the 5:50am MARC train from DC to Baltimore, then about a half hour on the light rail to Glen Burnie and a mile walk to Hilltop Elementary to conduct two assemblies. After that, I walked about a mile and a half to BWI Airport from which I caught a couple of shuttles to get to the MARC station so I could get back to DC to hold a couple of afternoon writing/performance workshops. Amidst all this, I saw a gentleman whose sizable and uniquely-shaped luggage could only have been either an upright bass carrier or Megatron himself. Since I'm a fan of both, I took a picture, with the permission of my good-natured musician friend, of course. #TeachingArtistTravels #SpoofSchool #CrunkAcademy (at BWI Thurgood Marshall Airport (BWI))