Festival Fiasco

Sorry I haven't blogged in about 2 weeks! I'm been all consumed with the festival fiasco! Well it's that time of year again....festival time. It's pretty much the bane of private English schools in Korea. Everyone feels the same way about it. Last year I thought it was bad, but I had no idea! This year has taken it to a whole new level.

At the end of the school year (February) each school has a musical performance. It's not the typical performance you are thinking of, it's a full out 30 min. play for each class, which means altogether about 4 hours of muscicals. Because the parents pay dearly for our school, they have the power to demand perfetion. And unfortunately they do. My school is trying something new this year with the musical and unfortunately, as a school we didn't start practicing until December. In hindsight, we should have started in the summer!

My students are doing Snow White. It sounds fun, but sadly there is no fun to be found. As of last week, our students still didn't know the lines (which in my opinion, 30 min. of lines is way to much for a 5 year old!), they weren't very good at the dances and they were already burnt out. Each time I played the song, it was accompanied by "Uuuughhh, Teeeeacccchhher... One more time?" Because it was no where near perfect, my class was told that we had to pratice our play for the next 5 days, 6 hours a day! We had to ditch all bookwork and only focus on the performance.

The whole thing makes me so sad. Yesterday during pratice, all of us teachers and the Korean teachers were watching the kids...and about 5 teachers at a time, yelling different directions to these poor kids. Three students ended up crying because they were regularly being told they were doing a "bad" job. These poor kids.

I recognize there is so much pressure on all sides. My school is only demanding perfection because the moms are nit-picking, trying to find something wrong with the performance in order to say our school is bad a pull their kids out of the school. Even one kid leaving our school would be a 24,000/year loss. Because there are so many private schools, the parents really do have all the power because they can just leave and go find a better one.

The sad part is, these kids are the ones who are losing out. All they need is attention love and encouragement. Instead they are being told they are bad because they are not pointing their toes in the song or they can't remember one of the 20 lines they have.

I know the performance with turn out well. They have worked incredibly hard and the kids will have fun, I suppose. The parents will put on a happy face and applaud their children, but aftermath and the phone calls our poor Korean staff will get because of the picky parents is still unknown. Sadly, this happens every year...

On a lighter note...Today I went to the post office to mail home a box. There is a big box that you can send on a boat to America for only 30 dollars. So, this morning I packed the box with shoes and clothes, taped it all up and tricked myself into thinking I'm stronger than I am :) I had this "good" idea that I'd save money and walk to the post office. It's never a good sign when you are only a few steps out of the building and realize your arms are already cramping. Haha! The post office was only 3 city blocks away, close right? Well...It took me about a half an hour to get there because every few feet I had to set the box down and take a break! How embarrassing! People on the street watched me curiously, smirking while probably thinking, "What is the white girl doing now!?" I eventually got the the post office, both the box and me in one piece. No injuries along the way, just rubber arms that are going to be real sore tomorrow. No need for lifting weights when you can fight with a box instead!