Tuesday, October 15, 2013

And Then This Happened...

So, after the AP students performed "A Monstrous Manifesto" by Catherynne M. Valente for the Upper School morning assembly on Friday, the 11th, Ms Weaver (the Middle School Counselor) asked me if they might be interested in performing for the Middle School students on Monday, the 14th.  Well, they were interested, and so we did.  We performed for a Middle School Advisory wrap-up session in the Chapel, a space that provided some challenges.  We also had only a limited time to practice, but we made it work.  It was a good lesson in improvising.  (I can't wait to take these kids on Random Acting tours around the school this spring!)

The students really loved seeing the reactions of the younger kids, and in the video below, you can see some of those reactions.

Before the performance, both Mr Breen and Mr Neblett stopped by (was it only a coincidence that I was dishing out slices of chocolate pie at the time?).  Mr Neblett spoke briefly to the students about how nice it was to see seniors taking the lead on educating their peers about important issues.  At some point during class, Emily Paul, older sister of class member Erin Paul, stopped by and watched a practice session.  (I always love it when former students stop in!)

After the performance, while we were finishing up our pie, the students talked about wanting to do even more, about maybe developing some kind of anti-bullying presentation to go along with the poem, or perhaps creating a website where students (from any school) could share stories anonymously and support each other.  Some of us had talked earlier that day in Advisory about how the most powerful anti-bullying messages come directly from kids, not from adults.  (Hmmm...I'm thinking there's a Senior Project in there, somewhere...)

I'm also hoping that the class will want to write some kind of message to Ms Valente, to let her know what her poem has inspired them to do...  (Let's see who's paying attention:  somebody should open a  GoogleDoc and share it with the class and with me...)

Anyway, the video is below.
Enjoy!


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