The things we do for our kids
30 June 2004 7:13 pm
Amidst the madness of the first week of the new term, my colleagues and I have been in a flurry of silliness over tomorrow's school concert, in celebration of Youth Day. I don't know if this event is observed in other parts of the world, but here the first Monday of July is a school holiday for primary and secondary school students. And their worked-to-the-bones teachers, of course. (Yes, yes, yes!) Primary school kids get an extra holiday on October 1st, Children's Day.
Every year we think up new ways to humiliate ourselves. We don't go for appreciative applause in this lunatic asylum of a school, because the kinds of performances that would invite that sort of response (e.g. ballet or Rachmaninoff piano recital, poetry reading, etc.) among literate, civilised company would only generate audible yawns, groans, jeers and boos from our "adorable" young charges. These philistines need camp, farce and slapstick to perk them up and get them engaged in what's on stage. They want to laugh at you. Anyhow we're not that talented. No one knows how to do all that high-brow shit, and let's just say that the talents some of us do have aren't always suitable for young audiences, nor should they become public knowledge. ;-)
Maybe it is their day of revenge, all that nagging and yelling and lecturing that they get from us in class, throughout which they have to bite their tongues and promise to get their shit together even as they curse us under their breaths, and this one time in a year they get to snigger and hoot all they want because we're all on the stage in the school hall, and no one's really policing their behaviour. We understand. We aim to please. Just rub us the wrong way the day after, and see what they get.
In the 5 years I've been a teacher in this school, I've been part of a singing item and a fashion show. They're not that high on the embarrassment scale compared to what my colleagues did. They attempted a magic show once. The Design and Technology teacher, James, made an enormous plywood box for the saw-your-beautiful-assistant-into-two act. The thing is, the beautiful assistant, Yvonne, was a petite creature. Five of her could go into that box and they'd all dodge the saw (which of course wasn't a real saw, we're not crazy yet). That same year we also had to do the Limbo Dance, which was really stupid but memorable because one of us, whom I shall call Emporio on account of his funky Emporio Armani glasses, amazed the kids with his flexibility. Unfortunately he outdid himself in the last round, he arched too far back and fell flat on his back, and those same cool glasses got thrown off his face. Oh my god, it was hilarious. I was practically screaming hysterically. And then there was the year we had K.U.T.E. (Kitchen Utensils Teachers' Ensemble), inspired by Stomp. For some reason they all decided to wear jungle-theme costumes, and they even made a backdrop of trees with lions and tigers (unnaturally forced into the same geography) lurking among them. You can't say we lack sportsmanship.
We also have serious crooners among us, but who cares they're not funny and I will not elaborate on them. (They do put up a good show, though, I have to say).
This year, my colleagues and I in the English Department managed to worm ourselves out of performing. We're all going to be emcees, the novelty being we would all be in our old school uniforms (which we of course had to purchase anew, given our considerable physical development over the years). I'm not doing much emceeing, though. I have to do a Powerpoint presentation featuring photos of all of us (all of us who willingly contributed our snapshots, that is, there are bloody cowards who absolutely refused), photos when we were much younger and had more hair, less fat, and wore clothes our parents picked for us, or clothes we thought were cool, then.
So, gotta get to work on that Powerpoint presentation. More to report later.
Older entries
Ramadan - 08 October 2006
Where I Have Been - 03 October 2006
Baby Talk - 10 August 2006
6 Weeks of Separation - 16 July 2006
Unacceptable Rudeness - 21 June 2006