Week 9 & 10
This week I had the amazing experience of watching stage 3 perform their last assessment for the term. They've been working on songs about World War I and II for most of the term. I have no idea why this was the task they were assigned, but it turned out to be artistically eye-opening. Most of the kids left the room while the teacher played videos of them singing their songs, but a handful got up and sang in front of their peers.
The songs were all lyrically far above what I'd expect from this age bracket. Most were written over the backing track to modern pop songs, but even then they had such good lyrics that I couldn't tell sometimes. About a quarter of the class wrote completely original songs to musician-backed tracks they'd found on YouTube or backing tracks that a family member had recorded for them, and I was in awe of the flow and quality. I've been playing guitar for over 15 years and writing songs for close to 10, and while the sound quality wasn't so good and they could use some confidence in their singing, so many of the songs radiated with talent.
One child moved the teachers to tears and earned a standing ovation by singing a song he'd written to the tune of Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah, about the loss of the way the character's parent was before they went to war, and I found myself gobsmacked. Another composed a piece about the character persisting through the horrors of war and trying to motivate other soldiers to do the same, and the skill with which she composed the backing track herself and sung along to it with different vocal techniques has me fully believing that she will find a career in music.
This week ended with the centenary excursion and a community day at the school in the evening. It was a long, stressful day, and my ukulele part in the choir's performance didn't go exactly how I practised it, but it was still an awesome day.
My biggest highlight was seeing the positive impact I'd had on the school community. At the community day I found myself talking to parents, who knew me because their kids went home and talked about my positive impacts; kids invited me and my partner into their games and their dancing; and the staff I work with seemed to have fully accepted me as part of the school's community.
I felt both honoured and lifted up by the experience, and I hope I can make as much of an impact in term 4 before the end of my placement.
One of stage 3's end-of-term projects was to make a diorama of a theme park or natural disaster to present to the kindergarten class. I ended up helping a number of students, who gave me permission to take photos of their dioramas.
Here (top left) we have a theme park dedicated to tornados, with a water feature to demonstrate how they affect objects, a food court that was decorated with Lego figures, and a model of a tornado-themed ride.
The next one (bottom left) is a water slide. It doesn't look like much, but it was quite a process to design and make - cellophane is much harder to work with than I remember!
Lastly (right), a representation of an area that had been through a tsunami. The hut was carefully made out of Paddle Pop sticks that the student taped together, and the stump was assembled from cardboard. It was a very chaotic but equally fun day to be helping out with stage 3, and I got to flex my creativity muscles in ways I haven't thought to in years.
