“You have fifteen minutes…”

When I first took on directing the St. Dominic Savio Children’s Choir a couple years ago, I ran into a common problem that classroom teachers experience. Kids would constantly ask me in the middle of rehearsal if they could leave to use the bathroom or get a drink of water. You lose track of who’s gone and for how long, and it ends up being detrimental to the rehearsal and the ensemble.

So, I made up a rule: The fifteen minutes between the end of school and the start of rehearsal would be their only opportunity to use the bathroom or get a drink of water. Once rehearsal started at 3:15, no one would be allowed to leave for any reason (barring a serious emergency) until rehearsal finished.

And it evolved into a silly little ritual for those fifteen minutes. My standard speech at three o’clock now goes like this:

Children’s Choir, you have fifteen minutes to use the bathroom, get a drink of water, finish your snacks, or [fill in the blank]. If you do not do any of these things in the next fifteen minutes, you must wait until after rehearsal is over to do them.

The “fill in the blank” is the fun part. Often I’ll reference current events, like “pay off the national debt” or “translate all 1500 pages of the Roman Missal.” Sometimes I’ll draw things from my personal life, like “finish Mr. C’s Christmas planning” or “buy Mr. C an iPad.” And sometimes I’ll just say something silly, like “build a 40-foot tower out of slices of American cheese.”

And then periodically throughout the fifteen minutes, I’ll count down: “Children’s Choir, you have 12 minutes” and “You have seven minutes” etc., etc.

Today was “leak confidential diplomatic cables on the Internet.” One kid asked me, “What’s a diplomatic cable?” And I had to respond, “I really don’t know.”