The Cultural Festival, Coming Soon

On November 2, the school will have some sort of festival. I will call it an assembly. Although I don’t have a firm idea of what the final presentation will be. The staff at Sogo center call it a ‘cultural festival,’ but I haven’t seen the same build up as I had with ‘sports day.’ So, I call it an assembly.

There are a couple of parts that I have seen and some I have been involved with. There will be a city wide English recitation/competition sometime late in November. In the assembly each grade level will perform a skit or a speech. The first graders (7th grade) are presenting a dialogue from their textbook. It is about a field trip to a wildlife sanctuary. There are about eight students involved. My heart goes out to them. They work very hard and they really do well. One student, though, is having trouble-pronouncing flower, another was having problems with ‘bird’ and many of them have problems with the ‘th’ sound. They are a lot of fun to work with. While I was working with them on the ‘errrrr’ sound I quoted Tony the Tiger and said, “They’re Grrrreat!” The kids were shocked that my voice resonated in the ventilation system for a few seconds.

There is only one kid in the second grade who will perform a speech. It is Shota. He is Chrissy’s former student from Santo Seminar, back in August. He is extremely serious and hard working. He puts too much pressure on himself. Whenever he speaks he will begin to cough or choke on his words. He and I made a tape of his speech. I read it and he would repeat what I read. I am sure he listens to it non-stop. When we last practiced his speech, I tried to get him to loosen up and use some hand motions with his speech. It didn’t work. He took the hand motions I showed him and wound them up really tight and then let them loose. He has no sense of timing. When he refers to himself his hand comes to his chest about two beats too late.

The third graders (9th grade) wrote their own script. It wouldn’t pass the censors back home. It takes place in a bar. This girl, Osawa, visits a bar and the bartender, Tanigawa, serves her a drink. While she drinks she notices a cat, played by Shiga, eating from an expensive dish. She contrives to get the dish by buying the cat. It has some elements of who’s on first and it really is a cute skit. I first helped them with grammar and then with blocking the skit. I showed Shiga how to meow in English, purr and to stretch like a cat. I told him that people don’t own cats, cats own people. It should be an interesting skit.

Then this week, I saw what the kids in room 10 are going to do. They are going to sing, “Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes” and “Bingo.” Again, Oyama ran the class. I was really just an audience member. They are a good group of kids. They even practiced speaking into the microphone. The regular teacher in room 10 drew a microphone on the whiteboard, the only one in the school, and the kids took turns speaking into it against the wall. They are probably the best-prepared group in the school.

I have no idea what else will happen this Friday. I did see that there are no classes that day. I will keep you posted. Other than the festival on Friday, this will be a busy week. Pullman’s Superintendent will be in town and a former teacher from PHS, Helen Reed. I get to see them both for just a bit. They are attending a seminar as part of the partnership between WSU and Nishinomiya. I look forward to seeing some people from back home.