Bye Bye Messen
Today we found out our band director would no longer be teaching at our school.
He just started this fall, replacing Mr. Shaley, who had been there for many years. Last year when I found out Shaley would be teaching at the college in town instead of our high school I was pretty much devastated, as was much of the band. A lot of tears that day… None of us could imagine how the band would function with out this wonderful teacher and musician.
Here comes Mr. Messen. He had student taught at my school when I was a freshman, and all the upperclassmen just loved him. I was, of course, too scared to hardly say a word to him. Being drum major I got to spend a lot of time with him this fall. He’s a really energetic guy, loves teaching, makes a real effort to know every kid’s name. All the girl swooned and all the boys thought he was chill. He fit right in, helped with all that he could. He helped the drum majors with conducting, the kids with their marching basics, was in charge of the jazz bands, concert band, pit orchestra, show choir back-up band, all sorts of things.
I think his problem is he wants to be friends with his students instead of a teacher. he would notice when people got new jeans, would notice when you had a bad day and would ask what was wrong. He would make you feel special. Apparently he made some feel a little too special…
The story goes like this (supposedly… you can never really trust high school rumors):
A few years ago when he was student teaching somewhere he had well… relations… with a girl less then a month after she graduated. The school knew about it when they hired him, and it was in a different district, so they didn’t have an obligation to pursue it further. However, a police report was recently filed and so the school has to step in. He was asked to resign.
We all knew something funny was going on this past Friday, but our principal came in and told us the news today.
No goodbye from him.
We just have to keep going…
Such is life.
my catharsis.
