Sunday, September 6, 2009

13 days after - The Joys of Working in a College Community Church

So, I don't know if I mentioned this previously on here, but I'm the bell choir director at the church in Bowling Green that I attended as an undergrad. That's one of the perks of returning to your undergraduate institution for grad school . . . everyone at the church knew me and vouched for me and I was offered the position without having to go through the laborious interview/application process.

But anyway, yeah . . . I'm the bell choir director. Now, this is a college community church, so a lot of the people who attend it are either students or, occasionally, professors or staff at the university. Some of those professors are also on staff here at church. For example, the choir director and music coordinator (in effect, my direct supervisor) is one of the choral professors at the nearby University of Toledo. (But we won't hold that against him.) Now the rules between college students and professors are maybe not quite as rigid as the rules between grade school students and teachers. For example, no one in grade school would ever call their teacher by their first name. In college, however, it depends on the professor. Some professors will stay on a first name basis, but others prefer Mr./Mrs./Dr. Whoever. Most of the professors at the College of Musical Arts in BG go by this second rule.

So as a college student, I've grown accustomed to referring to most of my professors as Dr. (usually) so-and-so. The choir director at the church is different, because he was never MY professor, so I never had a problem just calling him by his first name. The organist, however, is a professor at BG, one I've had in class, and one I have in class now. He is also now a colleague . . . a fellow staff member, and the rest of the church staff calls him by his first name. But since I'm still his student, I feel compelled to call him Dr. So and So.

It's a bit like my high school band director. Last year, during marching band, I worked alongside him, as a colleague, not a student. Yet, I always called Mr. Taylor, like I did in high school, and not by his first name, as the others did. But with new members of the staff who I had never had as teachers (at least one of whom was not that much older than I am) I was on a first name basis.

It's weird making that crossover. I spent the last year working at the same school system I attended from eighth grade on, and kept running across teachers I had had, except now I was working alongside them. I stage managed a show for my old high school theatre director. I taught an IEP student with materials I got from my old science teacher. A couple of my bosses were two of my old principals. The nature of my relationship with these old teachers has changed, and yet I can't stop thinking of them in the same way I thought of them then. (Which means I have to be careful when speaking about them casually with students . . . or at least, I had to be careful. I don't work there anymore, so I can say whatever the hell I want now.) But what happens when you cross that line is that you start to see teachers and professors as people, with lives beyond the school where they work, and with virtues and flaws that you never saw in the classroom. And it kind of makes me wonder how it will be when I'm eventually looking at that crossover from the other side, and start to see my old students growing up and getting jobs and, just maybe, working alongside me as a colleague. I wonder how I'll feel then.

Probably old.

-Matt