ShinGwang School Festival: A Photo/Video Essay

Back home, we have field day and science fairs. We hop around in sacks and throw water balloons; show off large models of molecules and frothing volcanoes. Given the American stereotype of Asians, you'd think they'd be all into the science fair thing, displaying their Ph.D.-level projects on long, neat tables, waiting with their spectacles and clipboards, ready to explain their Latest Stroke of Genius (patent pending) to the know-nothing waygook English teacher. But you'd be wrong, my friends. Very, very wrong.

Yes, the ShinGwang Middle School festival did have an area displaying some of the students' projects. But these projects had absolutely nothing to do with science, and it was a very small display. My students are into art - particularly performance art - and they don't give a rat's ass about anything academic if they can possibly find a way to avoid it. They are pushed so hard for 6 days a week, up to 14 hours a day, that when given the choice, they run from their schoolwork like woodland creatures from a forest fire. So when the school festival rolls around, they are not budding Einsteins. They are singers; they are dancers; they are artists. They are divas.

The day before the festival, as I was tripping merrily home at 4:30, the students were still excitedly running around the school with their craft supplies, hanging out the windows and singing songs. They had been as horrid all week as the little girl with the curl, but their vibes of excitement and anticipation even put me in a good mood. Large groups of students had been running up to me all day, yelling "Advertisement!" (the previous week's grade 3 lesson topic) and making me pinky promise that I would come to their class's room to participate in whatever they were cooking up. Being the wonderful teacher that I am, I carried through with my promises.

This turned out to be both a good and a bad thing. While I was happy to partake of the pizza in the Halloween cafe (not sure how Halloween and pizza go together, but that's ok), I was quite glad that I didn't ask exactly what sundae is until after I ate it.

Students slicing up sundae for my valiant consumption

Free hugs were distributed in the hallways.

Not a very good businessman.....

....but a very nice student (most of the time).

I shot balloons with a toy bow & arrow in one classroom, got a shoulder massage in another, and went shopping in the little second-hand market on the grade 1 hall. There was even a beauty parlor, where I got my nails and the back of my hand painted. Yes, it was supposed to be face paint, but when the cat-shaped stain finally wore off my hand 3 days later, I was happy I opted out of the facial adornment. I also chose not to get my hair done, mainly because crimping and perms are still en vogue here. (Many things about Korean fashion just scream 1980s in the USA.)

Then came the performance part of the festival. Around lunch time, everyone headed to a brand new building downtown with a huge, tricked-out performance space. There was a flurry of costume changes and students transformed from neatly uniformed children into people I could have easily mistaken for Asian adults. (Mind you, it's damn near impossible to tell the age of a Korean between 15 and 65 by anything outside of their clothes.) The music teacher/concert director/stage manager rehearsed each group until each eye was crossed and each ㅜ was dotted.

Performances included dancing and singing; solos, duets, and group performances; comedy and instrumental performances.

 

This is a traditional Korean percussion ensemble whose loud banging rehearsals I had to was privileged to listen to every day after school for months.

Okarina ensemble playing "My Heart Will Go On" (Koreans love sappy songs). The Okarina is the Korean equivalent of the recorder, which we all learned to play in elementary school, much to the dismay of any musical ear around.

And here we see a full-on performance of what I see in the hallways every day. Shut up, boy!

This first-grader is approximately half my height. Makes his singing somehow better.

And yes, they made me sing, too. It hardly needs to be said that this was not my idea, and it somehow evolved from Caity Teacher teaching an American pop song to the kids (I was not happy), to Caity Teacher singing in a chorus of students directed by Music Teacher (I was slightly less unhappy), to Caity Teacher singing in a trio with two other teachers (I was not at all happy). Of course the trio part was sprung upon me the previous morning, so at least I had little time to dread it. It seemed the other two teachers were more worried than I was, but then again, they aren't native English speakers and we sang in English (the only part of the original plan that was preserved).

"You Raise Me Up". Not quite gospel when sung with a collective Korean accent.

Naturally we did not stick to the published performance order, and my little ShinGwang Chorus of Englishee Singers somehow ended up performing immediately after a dance number by some leather-studded high school boys that basically brought down the house. The first grade girls in my chorus screamed like, well, middle school girls as the high school boys came past us through the wings, reaching out to touch them like they were rock stars and screaming even louder when the boys obliged. The audience was still in the throes of OMGHOTBOYS and screamed through most of our first song, including our little trio. There's no way they heard a note we sang, which is probably why most of the students told me the next day that I "sing pretty."

They did calm down towards the end of the first song and showed great support for their fellow students in the second song, clapping along and cheering loudly at the end. That was probably the most touching part -- even the mediocre performances received rousing applause and great, encouraging cheers from the other students. It's illustrative of one of the main differences I notice between the students here and what I remember from middle school. My students beat the living crap out of each other every day and play many of the same tricks and jokes on each other as we did in middle school, but it's never malicious or done to hurt other students' feelings. The kids here are genuinely kind to each other (as middle schoolers go). This goes hand-in-hand, I think, with the fact that people are far more trusting here (and presumably more trustworthy?), even in the cities. What is it that Koreans are doing that results in what seems to be a kinder, safer society? And do the ends justify whatever those means may be?