Assemblies

So a lot of the other foreign teachers tend to dislike assemblies but I think they are a very interesting cultural experience. If you have ever watched a really cheesy Asian variety show on TV, then you have an idea of what they are like. The kids put on little performances, they sing, they dance, one time a little girl did a nun-chuck demonstration. It is pretty interesting.

It is set up that each class is supposed to arrange one assembly. The class assemblies teach the school about what their class is doing plus allows time for each teacher to give out student awards. Once a month is a birthday assembly, so far the kids had one assembly where they made ice cream and one where they made fruit platters. Every so often is an assembly for something special like a scholarship competition. The kids who entered each had to prepare a performance and a poster.
















Some of the reasons foreign teachers tend to dislike assemblies is they are long, mostly only Chinese is spoken (so we don't often know what is happening), the kids have to dress up and put on shows in a way that only a stage mom could think up, and the kids in the audience have to sit very straight, still and quiet on the floor of the gym for a somewhat unreasonable length or time.

Today was a special assembly for the school's birthday. I found it sort of surprising it falls in November rather than the start of the school year. Anyway, a lot of important people like school board representatives and the local news reporters attended. Normally, we only have our department at assemblies but since it was a special occasion the other department came too so it was quite a fire hazard. The kids all dressed up in their fancy school uniforms, which looked nice, except they had to wear sweaters and it was unseasonably warm today. Aside from a few boring speeches the kids sang songs and waved flags. One group of kids did a performance of the show Stomp. Another group danced to what I can only guess was a patriotic song because they all wore army costumes. Some of the male Chinese teachers did a rap to the tune of Eminem. Some of the female Chinese teachers did a modern dance to some pop song while wearing really short shorts. The funniest part was when they demonstrated in a video how they could play songs using their ipad software, then about a dozen kids came out and played a song together on their ipads. I never saw anything like it before.