…to never chaperone a school dance again. If I feel like retaining the rest of my sanity, that is.
Editor’s Note: This is the first in a (hopefully long) series of posts about life as a high school teacher by my lovely wife, Heather.
Try and stay easy on her, this is her first blog. 
-Lewis
Homecoming dance is the most popular dance of the whole year. People bring boy/girl/friends, along with people who are just friends, and people who may or may not be going out….*sigh*
Relationships are freakin’ confusing.
(A note for our international readers: I’m not sure if the secondary-level schools (roughly ages 14 through 18) have what we call in America “Homecoming Week/Weekend,” which is usually on one of the last home games in that school’s football (American football) season. There’s usually a “school spirit week,” which is nothing more than a good excuse to allow students to come in wearing the wacky costume or style of the day. We had the following:
- Monday – Pajama day. Self-explanatory, although some people streched the definition of “pajamas” to include “skimpy outfits that one would only wear to bed if they weren’t on wearing it for long, if ya know what I mean.”
- Tuesday – Pink Day. Also self-explanatory. I forgot to mention, all week, they collected money for breast cancer research.
- Wednesday – Hat Day. This one is very popular, as you usually can’t wear hats in school. There’s a catch, though. You had to buy a pin on Monday or Tuesday (a pink ribbon on a safety pin) in order to wear a hat. Almost three-quarters of the school wore a hat.
- Thursday – Hawaiian Shirt Day.
- Friday – Class Colour Day. All week, they sold different-coloured t-shirts during lunches, with one colour for each grade/class:
- 9th grade – green (a rather ugly bright green, at that, but many people wore other shades of green with it)
- 10th grade -blue
- 11th grade – red
- 12th grade – Black and gold (our school colours.)
Also on Friday was a pep rally during 5th period. (Thank god, that group of freshmen is my worst class all day, and now I didn’t have to see them.) The pep rally involved a presentation of all the fall sports team, a cheerleading routine, and perhaps the most interesting bit, a tug-of war between the different grades. The victors got to face the teachers. Teachers won. Agasint quite a few football players.
So Friday night, the homecoming football match happens. It was FUCKING WET. We went anyway, though. Got wet. Had fun.
Saturday night was the Homecoming Dance. This is where all the fun is.
Started out just fine. Until around 8 or so, when everybody who was going was already there. Firstly, teens don’t really dance anymore. They call it dancing, but it’s really just grinding. Not a pretty sight to see. By 9:30 or so, the back wall of the gymnasium turned into a touchy-feely makeout-fest. Ew. Lewis made the foolish decision of chaperoning as well. He’s still got a headache (as of Sunday morning, the time of writing.)
What happened was, there was a mass of humanity clustered around the front of the DJ table, around 50 people deep. In the middle of this madness, somewhere, somehow, SOMEBODY was smoking pot. It’s got a very distinctive smell, and it has the unfortunate quality of being able to rise above any other smell in the room, whether that smell be hormones or body odor. Nobody got caught, however. However, thanks to the use of a breathalyzer, a couple of students were caught on the way out with a BAC of .9 each.
The dance ended at 11. Couldn’t have come any sooner.
Earlier in the school year, I started to write a draft for a blog about how school goes on a normal day. I still haven’t finished it. It’ll definitely be up soon, I’m thinking perhaps each quarter in the school year, I’ll make a new blog post.
Thanks for reading!
-Heather McIntosh
