Yesterday, my kindergartners performed a live theatrical production of Snow White and the Six Dwarves. This was something we spent the last two months preparing (a very stressful two months!), and I’m happy to say that the play was a success, and it’s over! I now have tremendous respect and sympathy for any elementary school teacher who has to prepare young kids for plays every year.
When we were told in December that each kindergarten class would be performing a play for graduation, we were told we had to make sure the script allowed each student an equal amount of lines. In other words, there could be no main character, otherwise parents would get upset that the main character is not their child. My initial reaction was, Now how on Earth am I supposed to find a play with 9 equal characters?! After some careful thought, I decided on Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, and planned to give each dwarf many lines so Snow White would not steal the show.
We were also told that each play had to be 15 minutes long. That may not seem like a lot of time, but when it involves kindergartners memorizing 15 minutes worth of lines and stage movements, 15 minutes can seem like an irrational request! I wrote my script, with no clue how many pages 15 minutes should be, and decided it was long enough.
Now came the casting. I only had three girls (of 9 students total), and only one of them had the speech skills to be Snow White (the “not” main character). She has a lively personality and speaks with such clarity and poise. I knew she would nail the role. Then came the fun of casting each dwarf. Luckily, each of my students has personalities that already fill the personalities of the dwarves. My student who is consistently low-energy was Sleepy, my brilliant student was Doc, my student who never gets upset was Happy, my shy student was Bashful, my least hygienic student was Sneezy, my silliest student was Dopey (who also played Prince Charming), and my strong-willed student was Grumpy. It was almost as if my class was meant to perform this play! That left the last girl to play the Queen, a role that she does not personify, but I knew she’d like wearing a pretty dress and crown.
I’d like to say my students were thrilled about their roles, but at least half of them had major protests. The girl who played the queen was not ok being the enemy. Prince Charming was embarrassed about the kissing scene, especially after students teased him about it. Grumpy could not grasp the fact that his role was a funny role, and we were laughing at his lines, not at him. Doc thought his role was boring. After being so excited about how seemingly perfect these roles were, I started fearing that this play might not work out.
After a month of rehearsing and memorizing lines, one of my girls (the queen) dropped out of our school. This gave me no choice but to cast the only other girl (who was perfectly cast as Bashful) to play the queen. This worried me, because as mentioned before, this girl was the shyest student in all of kindergarten, and had the lowest speech skills. Could she pull off such an aggressive and scary role as the queen? I then had to fill in the role of Bashful, so I decided to get rid of Dopey (according to my kids, “Dopey is die.”), and have that student play Bashful. This was another unfitting match, since this boy is the silliest and farthest from shy in the class! Then again, it was an opportunity for him to take on a challenging acting role and perhaps earn himself an Academy Award.
My students quickly grew bored of practicing the play, especially the students who disliked their roles. But we had to practice frequently. Surprisingly, my students memorized their lines quickly, without me even telling them to start memorizing them. (Perhaps this is more evidence to back up the theory that children at their age have sponge brains and can learn anything quickly.) The challenge was getting my students to take the play seriously. Half of them would say their lines with silly, incomprehensible voices, or would say their lines with little to no enthusiasm, or would make jokes, or would say other kids’ lines, or would not pay attention to when it was their turn to speak, or would have side conversations with friends while rehearsing. You can imagine my frustration as these things occurred almost every time we practiced!
I tried drilling in their brains how important it was that we got everything right for the actual performance, but I also felt torn because on the inside, I knew that this should just be a fun experience for them, and it should not be as stressful as the parents and directors were making it. I hated that the parents seemed to care more about this play than their kids’ academic achievements or behavior in class. I struggled to find a balanced approach to getting them to take it seriously, but not stress them out so much that they feared the final performance.
So finally it was show time. The two other kindergarten teachers and myself spent two months worrying about this day, and at the same time couldn’t wait to get it over with. I just thought to myself, If my kids can just get through the play without forgetting many lines, falling on their faces, crying, or looking miserable, I’ll be satisfied. I’m proud to announce that I am more than satisfied with their performance. All lines were remembered, they spoke clearly and loudly (for the most part), parents laughed, and my kids appeared to be having a fun time. I even found myself having a good time, smiling and laughing while narrating. I was genuinely proud of my students, each and every one of them. I hugged them all, and felt overwhelming joy.
Then, sadness.
It occurred to me, this is graduation. After today, they are no longer my kinders. Most of them will continue coming to Poly School in the afternoons as 1st graders, and I may be able to continue teaching them, but it’ll be different. I feel differently about my kinders than I do for my afternoon elementary school classes. I see my kinders 5 hours a day, and I am their only teacher. They are my kids. And I really do love them.
After the graduation ceremony, the kids, parents, and teachers went upstairs to the classrooms for pictures. I stood at the back of the class while parents took photos of the students and me; some of the whole class, some of just me and individual students, some of the individual students, their mother and me, some of a few of the students and me, some of the individual students, my co-teacher and me. And it all happened in a whirlwind! I just stood there, putting my arm around whoever stood next to me and smiling. Some mothers even held my hand for the picture. I felt like a wax figure at Madam Touseau’s Wax Museum, just standing with the same pose and smile.
And as quickly as the students and mothers cycled through the various group photos, the mothers and students left, and before I knew it, my co-teacher Jane and I were standing alone in an empty, cleaned out classroom. The most disheartening thing about it was neither of us felt like we got to have a proper goodbye with the children. I wanted to tell them one last time how proud of them I was, how much I enjoyed being their teacher, how impressed I am with their English skills, and how much I will miss them.
What was upsetting to Jane and I was that very few of the parents took a few seconds to thank us. I understand that at least half of the mothers speak little to no English, but my co-teacher is fluent in both languages, and they didn’t think to say any final words to either of us. I felt entirely unacknowledged by some of them. One mother, who I see and say hi to frequently, bought Jane and I some nice chocolates, and another took us out to dinner that night, so at least we felt appreciated by a few of them.
So next week marks the start of a new chapter in my life in Pohang. I will have a new schedule of classes with new students. Poly School is also relocating to a campus across town, so we will spend the week getting the new school ready. We will also be moving to apartments on that side of town, so we’ll be busy packing, moving, and unpacking. This new neighborhood (called I-dong) has a lot more going on than our current one (called Jangseong-dong), so it will be nice having so many restaurants and fun things to do in our own hood. At the same time, we’re a little sad to leave our quiet neighborhood. There are a few establishments here that are dear to us, like a family-owned bakery that makes great wheat bread (something that is hard to find in Korea), our favorite galbi restaurant (Korean barbeque), and the only authentic American restaurant in Pohang, owned by a friend of ours. There are also friends that live very close that we will miss seeing frequently. But our new neighborhood is close to other great friends, so it’s all about trade-offs I suppose.
To see their performance of Snow White: http://youtu.be/RKjiEq39Dro
Until next time…
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