All about a Performance!

Hello friends on 15th August, we all Indians celebrated our 75th Independence day. Earlier as a homemaker, I remained largely away from the festivities that’s mainly centered around various schools and community functions, sports and other art competitions.

But this time, becoming a school teacher, got to experience the holding of a cultural function involving  handling of children of various age group and co-ordinating with other teachers, so that, it is conducted smoothly without any glitches. The exhilarating experience of which I’m gonna tell you in this blog.

I, along with another fellow teacher, were assigned the supervision of the choir group, who were singing a medly of patriotic songs in Hindi and Bengali. When I took charge  I was totally uncertain of what exactly my responsibilities were. I better decided to go with the flow and do my best with whatever instructions came my way.

So, the call was to take the children for the first stage rehearsal. When I took stock of the situation, a large group of students comprising of more than thirty five of them from class six to tenth standard constituted the choir group. It was more like a fun gathering for them, a little respite from studies. The music teachers find it really hard to prune the total numbers to a manageable one!

We were entrusted to lead the entire flock from the music room to the auditorium. With a lot of shouting (which I nearly forgot after my children are grown up, though!) on our part,  the boisterous lot were at last congregated at stage. With a lot of adjustments they stood at last to sing the songs.

My heart almost sank to see the lackluster performance, the faces of other teachers present there, telling the same story. Barring a few, all the others seemed out of their depth. The music teacher had to chip in herself to make it a little palatable.

The guitar playing students whom were ten of them in total, seated in the front, were almost inaudible. Only their teacher who seated himself in the middle could be heard! The vice principal present there strictly reprimanded that no prompting from teachers like this could be allowed.

We took them back to the music room. I positively conveyed to the music teacher and the head guitarist about the below par performance. They were ready with the excuses that they didn’t get enough time to rehearse, but the malady lied in another front, the students looked not motivated enough.

I took the initiative and talked to boys who were playing guitars that they must think themselves as the soldiers in the battle field to save their motherland and they were holding the guitar instead of the gun. The pep talk seemed to have worked as I found all of them sitting straight and charged up while concentrating on the strings of their respective guitar, when the rehearsals began again.

I also talked to the singinging group which was quite a large one, and put acress to them in no uncertain terms that they have to infuse more energy and earnestness to the songs, and should be mindful that they were representing their school and  that the reputation of it was at stake. Then I took a chair and sat right in front of them and didn’t budge from there till the end.

The ploy worked. The body language of the children changed. They became sincere in practising, whenever anybody tried to stray, a stern look from me was suffice to make them fall in line.The music teachers were also fired up now, giving instruction to them with added vigour. We, the teachers present there clapped and encouraged them with every improvement in their performance.

It was the penultimate day to the function and when the rehearsals ended, everybody looked satisfied by the outcome.

On the day of the function, the lady teachers had the dress code of creame coloured sarees, the male teachers wore light colored kurtas and children were all in white with green or orange wrapper across their shouldres representing the tricolor.

As they were about to enter the stage from the green room, I just showed them the thumbs up and raised my fist to boost their morale. As the children arranged themselves in disciplined way, we silently sneaked in to see the performance.

Believe me friends,  after ending of the performance the entire auditorium erupted in applause. The dignitaries were specially profuse in their commendation. When the children finally retreated after taking the bow, each and every face was beaming in glory and happiness.

It was a job well done. I was really surprised to see how few words of encouragement can bring such an emphatic change in the attitude of children. If I restricted myself to the duty of just managing the children without bothering about how they are performing, the end result could have been different. As I was new, I had to take the initiative boldly, I took it and didn’t have to regret.

Thanks for reading. Taking advantage of the long weekend of three days, I wrote two posts back to back. I will try to be back with another one, whenever I get some free time.

Wishing you all health and happiness, adieu for now.

Pc: Me, though the picture is a little grainy but the real one!

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