Maci Jordan

Everyone’s senior year makes them look back on the journey that has brought them to the end. Doing so, you might be reminded of incredibly embarrassing moments that you wish to completely forget or you might remember that feeling of getting an A on a test you had not studied up on at all for. For some, you’ll remember one or two teachers who made a lasting impact on you. If you ask any student or alumnus who took choir, they’ll agree that Mrs. Danoff is one of these teachers.
Lynne Danoff can seem like a strict teacher to outsiders, but those who know her know that she is stern because she cares deeply for her students. She believes that in advocating for one’s self and others people will succeed and better themselves.
“I see a lot of injustice in society,” Danoff said, “I think the way to make things better is to start locally. Start with the families and kids of America. If a kid has a problem and they don’t know how to advocate for themselves how are they supposed to succeed? ”
Mrs. Danoff also believes that what she teaches in her class isn’t just music but rather how to be people in society and act accordingly.
She often says, “To be late is to be on time, to be on time is to be late, and to be late is unacceptable. In the real world, the behavior we see happen so often in school won’t fly by anywhere else.”
Now one might ask Why not cut these students some slack? They’re students; they should not be held to such standards.
To that, Danoff says, “We have fun through success. There is a joy that comes with singing karaoke and there is a joy with working hard and realizing that hard work can actually give you an extreme amount of success”, she goes on to say, “I’m gonna liken it to nutrition. You can have the same amount of calories in a Milky Way Bar as you do a full meal with a steak and salad. And one is more nutritious for you. One is going to fuel your body properly and the other is going to give you, like a sugar rush and then you crash.”
Mrs. Danoff is an incredibly strong and resilient person, but like many who hold those traits, she wasn’t always like this. There was a moment in her life when she too was the quiet kid who kept to herself. She experienced the ups and downs of a student’s life, and how it’s not possible to always succeed.
“I think thriving in every situation is not attainable,” Danoff said. “I survived Middle School. I was bullied heavily. It just wasn’t a good place without getting into specifics. It was really really awful. Body shamed, religion shamed, appearance shamed, everything. And the principal at the time did nothing to help me. Just as an example, I was in eighth grade going to science class. While getting stuff out of my locker, a kid who lived across the street from me came over and kicked my knees out from under me. I fell, my books went everywhere. Aside from all the cursing that happened from her just because I was existing; I never talked to anyone, you know? I was a quiet little mouse of a child. She kicked my knees out from under me, my books fell everywhere, she laughed and ran away. And my eighth-grade science teacher looked down at me and said ‘You’re gonna be late. Get up and get in my room’, so in that kind of situation, you can’t thrive. But you have to find a way to get yourself through in an uncomfortable place.”
She experienced so much turmoil yet never gave up and instead stood up for herself. It’s one of the biggest reasons why she often tells her students to be their own advocates. Whenever they get a class they don’t like or are forced into something with which they do not feel comfortable, she often encourages them to not submit to what people want from them.
“Be an upstander and not a bystander. If you stay silent, you are doing as much damage as people who are causing problems,” she said. “I say it because I know nobody teaches kids to do that. My parents always taught me to advocate for myself. I know a lot of parents, whether they intend to or not, a lot of parents don’t talk about that with their kids. And it’s an important thing; it’s a life lesson. If you want change to happen, just sitting there letting it fester is not going to make things better. You have to make change for yourself. So why not learn how to advocate for yourself in a hopefully safe space, here where people should be listening to you before you go out into the real world?”