Christmas Song
In New York City, Kasdan Cresswell Academy is the outcome of a just happened merger between an all girls' school with an all boys' school into a coed school. By the start of Kasdan Creswell's first academic term, not all aspects of the merger have been ironed-out. In what was already a threatened music program at both schools, Kasdan's director of music Diana Thiessen and Creswell's director of music Ken Stoddard still have music teaching jobs in the merger running parallel music programs, it not being clear what will happen to either of their jobs based on monetary issues, with the likelihood that both will have jobs by the end of the completed merger low. Diana and Ken already do not see eye to eye on anything music-related, Diana who teaches in an academic fashion primarily of the classics, while Ken wants his students to have free expression of music, his musical teaching bent toward the popular. The easily-stressed school principal, Jessica Gedler, suggests that the two submit their own individual entries to a television sponsored high school Christmas carol contest, the outcome of the contest which would go a long way to convincing the decision makers on who should be the school's music director. The contest is to be a duo singing any Christmas carol in any arrangement. Diana's two female students and Ken's two male students are a disparate bunch: Liz Strait, the girl most like to...; extremely shy Amy Barnes, whose shyness is due to being overprotected by her parents in an effort to shield her from any emotional pain; Billy Warren, the golden boy with an ego large enough to fill a football field; and Carlo, an academically bright student new to the school who is having trouble knowing where to fit in due to being confined to a wheelchair. Because of their differences, it is difficult enough to bring each team together as a cohesive unit, that is until the students learn through the grapevine that their respective teacher's job may be on the line based on the outcome, which leads to the view that the other team is the sworn enemy. Through it all, Diana and Ken are each going through personal issues of their own, specifically in not having an active social life. As hard as they try, they seem not to be able to avoid each other socially, that want to avoid based on most of their conversations ending in a philosophical argument.
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