Scared for the Future

Some of you may know that I play the piano for the local middle school choir class. Well, occasionally their teacher, my ward-friend Brenda, has them sing a solo of their choice in front of the class. I have unfortunately been present at too many of these "performances." They usually don't practice and show up on the day and stick their ipod in their ear and sing along to a song only they can hear. It's painful to say the least. Even if they do prepare, it's usually an easy Disney song they've known all their life, so it's not quite fair. I know I'm just the pianist, but I had had enough, so I told Brenda that the kids need to step it up. I volunteered to bring in some art songs from home and told her she needed to assign each student a song. They were songs they had never heard before and were somewhat difficult. (She wouldn't let me pick songs in Italian, darn it :0) Anyway, she gave the songs to them about a month ago and occasionally let them practice in class. Today was the day for them to perform... it wasn't much better than the old performances. Half of them didn't even try to have their song memorized (they held music in front of them). I was playing as quietly as I could and still couldn't hear them. When I could hear them, they weren't singing all the words and notes right. One of them even decided to change the song from how I had been practicing it with her. She cut a verse and told me in the middle of the song to skip to the end. I got to help grade them and it's no surprise that only one student got above a 60%. Sad, isn't it? I don't know what I or Brenda or anyone can do to get through to these kids. I've never seen so many kids that have no attention span, no respect, and no ambition. I know I sound negative, but you'd have to be in my shoes to know that I'm being kind right now. It's really so much worse than I'm portraying right now. I cry for the future and what my kids will have to go through and hope that they will rise above.