Folk Dance Week!

Teachers often need a pick-me-up around this time of the year. I find that focusing on the most entertaining aspect of my career—the kids—is a good way to maintain my sanity (or insanity?) during the last few days of school.

This is for my teacher friends, especially you music teacher friends. We all need to remember the positives in our profession from time to time.

Around the last two weeks of school, the P.E. teacher and I combine our classes and teach the kids old-fashioned longways set dances and square dances. Once we get past the initial "Eww! I'm not holding his/her hand" (which doesn't last long for us veteran teachers), it's actually a delightful way to close out the year.

1. One of the older boys had to be my partner the first day. He moaned and carried on in the beginning.

"Admit it. You dig being my square dance partner."

"Nooooo . . . "

Yesterday, after square dancing all week, he ran over to me and said, "Mrs. Duggan, come on. You were my partner the last time!"

2. We combined my kindergarten class with the fifth grade P.E. class. One of the most difficult students exclaimed, "Yes!" when he saw the little kids walk in. A couple of minutes later, he was enthusiastically do-si-doing with a girl who came up to his hip.

3. Throughout the week, girls started wearing "flippy dresses" to folk dance classes.

4. When one of my third grade classes realized they couldn't dance in the gym due to scheduling differences, they were very disappointed.

"But we only got to dance once, Mrs. Duggan!"

So we shoved the risers back and spent the class folk dancing in my oddly shaped music room.

5. One of my students was having a bad morning the other day.

"Oh well," she said. "At least I have folk dancing to look forward to this afternoon."

BONUS:
This isn't specifically about folk dancing, but it was a hilarious end to our week. At the end of our final session, we mentioned that we would be out of school this Monday for Memorial Day. Our assistant principal was dancing with us that afternoon (because our administrators love folk dance week too).

The kids turned to the assistant principal and said in unison, "Thanks, Mrs. Anderson!"

"Wow!" she said, as we cracked up. "They think I have a lot of power!"

"Yeah," I said. "They think you're like God or something!"

For the latest blog updates, visit and "like" Rebecca Turner-Duggan.

Klutziness Does Not Pay Off

Lately, I've been dropping everything. I'm not sure why. Am I too caffeinated? Too much rushing around and multitasking?

"This is nothing new," Dan says. "You're just a klutz."

But it's gotten worse in the last few weeks.

It started out innocently enough. My fake wedding ring (the one I wear while my real one is being cleaned) fell off my finger and rolled under my car. Then my gum fell out of mouth and onto the carpet a few times one evening. And my bookmark slid out of my book about a million times that week.

But it got serious fast. I started dropping my iPod, a lot. My husband, Dan, thinks this eventually led to The Infamous iPod Crash of 2014.

I dropped my smartphone in the garage and cracked it. We got it fixed, and I dropped it again. Luckily, it didn't break that time.

"You should stop carrying your phone and iPod in your hand," Dan advised. "Maybe put them in your purse before you head out."

In the middle of class, I dropped my laptop and cracked the "skin" (terminology inherited from my computer engineer husband), and now the mouse is loose. Even my students, who love to make fun of me when I get clumsy, gasped as the computer fell to the ground.

"That wasn't good, Mrs. Duggan," they said, shaking their heads in disbelief.

My teacher friend says she is rubbing off on me. She drops stuff a lot too. Maybe music teachers just have too much stuff to juggle. They are constantly teaching back-to-back classes without any time to set things down.

But I couldn't use the teacher excuse when I dropped pineapple all over our kitchen floor a few weekends ago. I washed it off in the sink, but Dan later admitted he wasn't brave enough to eat it.

So on Monday night, I didn't tell Dan that I dropped a big colander full of kale when hot oil splashed me in eye. I wash the kale off and cooked it, figuring the heat would kill any bacteria that the floor had been harboring.

Oh well. What Dan doesn't know won't hurt him.

For the latest blog updates, visit and "like" Rebecca Turner-Duggan.

Deep Thoughts on High School Musical

I recently took on the challenge of music directing High School Musical. Despite the fact that musical theater is kind of like my second occupation, I had never seen High School Musical. The truth is, that craze is from a younger generation. (Sigh.)

But I decided to bite the bullet and watch the movie this week . . . for research purposes, of course. I was warned by others, mostly fellow Gen-Xers, that it was rather cheese-tastic. And it is. But it was also kind of (sheepish cringe) fun too.

Here are few of my observations during my one-hour-and-thirty-seven-minute journey into pure camp:

1. Does anyone else think that High School Musical is Grease lite? You know, without the drinking, smoking, potential pregnancy, and . . . well . . . "Grease Lightning?"

2. Coach Bolton is the hot one. You know you're getting old when you say to yourself, "That guy looks too young to have a son Zac Efron's age."

3. I identify most with Ms. Darbus. I mean, cell phones in the classroom are annoying. And if I gave a bunch of kids detention, I would put them to work painting sets for my spring musical too.

4. If all mean girls were as harmless as Sharpay Evans, high school would have been a lot easier.

5. Also, most identity crises at that age are a lot more difficult, even detrimental at times, than being guilted into not going to call backs for the school musical. 

6. A high school where everyone breaks out into song and dance every few minutes? Heck yeah!

For the latest blog updates, visit and "like" Rebecca Turner-Duggan.

Going Gray (Un)gracefully (RE-POST from 5/15/11)

I wrote this post three years ago. Today, thirty-seven is looming around the corner, and I still haven't dyed my hair.

Personally, I think thirty-four is too young to start going gray. Unfortunately, the biochemical pigmentation on my scalp does not share this opinion.

I have held off on dying my hair, reluctant to introduce unnecessary chemicals into my system. Or perhaps I have refrained for reasons of vanity, plagued by distant memories of my hair taking on an orange-ish tint when I attempted to dye it once in college. Besides, I am kind of partial to my natural hair color, despite those pesky gray hairs that have appeared in recent years.

To make matters worse, my gray hairs are shorter because when they first started showing up, I plucked them. Now those wiry little suckers stick straight up as though I have a chronic static electricity disorder.

My husband, Dan, enjoys tormenting me about my new hair follicle additions.

“I only see them when I’m standing right over the top of your head," he says to me. "If you weren’t so short, I wouldn't even be able to see them.”

One afternoon, I was having issues with our computer, and (as is my custom) I was blaming Dan, Software Engineer Extraordinaire, for all of the technological problems in the world.

“Watch out. You’re giving yourself more gray hair,” he said, peering at the top of my head.

“You can't possibly see them. I covered them with mascara," I retorted, proud of the quick remedy I had just read in a magazine.

“You didn't cover that one, or that one, or that one, or that one . . .”

Then I chased him around the house, snapping him with a kitchen towel while he laughed in hysteria. He had truly amused himself.

Later that evening, Dan touched the top of my head and said, “Gross. You hair is stiff. It feels like you have mascara in it."

Then he broke out into belly-bouncing laughter again.

Dan caught me checking my hair - specifically the gray hairs protruding from my scalp - in the car mirror one weekend. He snickered.

When I glared at him, he said quickly, “This is a funny song, huh?”

“It's about the death of his father.”

"Oh . . ." Dan pursed his lips sheepishly.

I remember admiring a family friend's newly highlighted hair at a picnic one summer.

"Once I started going gray, I realized it was easier to go light rather than try to stay dark," she told me.

I didn't give much thought to her hair color philosophy until recently. That is probably the reason my husband's hair still seems to so closely resemble his natural color - blond hair hides gray better than brown.

Just you wait, Dan. Your day is coming. Blond doesn't trump gray forever. Of course, as a result of our gender-biased society, you will simply be referred to as a "gracefully aging, distinguished older gentleman."

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