Can’t We All Just Get Along?
Life is full of drama…
Drama in the news, drama in politics, drama at church, drama between competing businesses, drama between teens…
Let’s face it: Drama is everywhere! It’s a part of the fabric of our lives and, like it or not, we have to contend with it every day of those lives. Lately it’s even been a part of TMSOW and in spite of our best efforts to avoid it – and we take pride in having minimal drama here! – we’ve come to discover that it’s just a part of being in business sometimes.
The questions on a lot of people’s minds is pretty basic: HOW do I deal with it? How do I not let myself get tangled up in it?
You know, if I had THE answer to this I imagine that I could bottle it, sell it, and retire for it! Our truth is that there is only so much that we have control over in our lives. We can only take care of ourselves no matter what somebody else says or does.
On a different level, however, we work with kids here. That’s a whole other level of drama in and of itself! C’mon, admit it. You know I’m right!
As people who work with teens and tweens every day, teachers know that drama is a part of growing up. It’s ranges from the littlest things all the way up to teen suicide – man is THAT one hard to deal with and we’ve had to deal with two cases of that in the past 3 months in our community!
Teens and tweens in the 21st Century live in a really difficult time. They are bombarded by social media, slammed on Snapchat, bullied on Facebook, and what used to be something you could get away from in the pre-social media world we live in is anything but that in this day and age. If a kid is bullied at school they can’t reasonably expect to get away from it simply by going home. Often the bullying continues relentlessly 24/7 via things like Snapchat, Instagram, and Facebook and it’s right there in their hands in the form of their smart phones!
So, we’ve decided to take a more aggressive stance on this topic at TMSOW! We are instituting a “check your drama at the door” policy here. Starting with our new year in August we will be asking every student to turn off their phone when they come into the studio for lessons or other activities. Of course if they need to call home for a ride they’ll get to do that, but otherwise we’re going to do our best to give all of our students a break and see if we can’t create a nearly drama-free zone they can come to here and have a place where they can escape the drama.
We’ll keep you posted how it goes!!!