Entry tags:
Chorus and stuff
You know what the best thing is about being a teacher? It's that feeling of being so ridiculously proud of your students that you feel like you're going to explode from the emotion. Even if it has nothing to do with anything you personally taught them.
I don't talk about school much in public entries, but suffice it to say that our school has gone through a lot of crap in the last few weeks due to the flu outbreaks, having to cancel various events and classes and other stuff. We had to postpone our chorus competition until today -- and YESTERDAY, 4 confirmed cases of the "Type A" flu popped up in class 3-2, so they had to stay home today and for the next few days. So after all their work, they didn't get to perform.
In more craziness, the boy who was playing piano for class 3-3's second song ALSO had to stay home today because he was sick (whether it is flu or not, we don't know yet, but he had a headache yesterday and a fever today). And well, 3-3 didn't have a backup piano player -- the girl who played their first song hadn't rehearsed piano for the second song at all, and it was the special song, not the common song. (Every grade sang a song together, then each class in that grade had to sing that song to be judged by, as well as a special song that only that class would sing.)
You know what class 3-3 did? This morning at 8am when they found out they were without a piano player, 4 girls in the class spontaneously arranged an acapella backup line for their song. And the entire class got together and rehearsed it a few times in the morning with a few people taking on the extra acapella backup. And then they got up there and performed it in front of a full auditorium.
THEY WERE ABSOLUTELY AMAZING.
Yeah, there were slight mistakes in harmony and a few notes, but what can you expect after they rehearse with a piano for 3 months and suddenly have to perform a crazy different version on a few hours' notice?
I brought my little USB voice recorder with me and taped the entire concert and I've listened to class 3-3's song several times (am listening to the concert right now still) and I want to cry from how amazing they were and how proud I am of them.
The 3rd-years as a whole were singing a song after that as well, but about half the girls were crying so hard by the end of it that they couldn't sing. The girl conducting the song was waving her arms with tears running down her face.
Our principal went up to give a closing speech, but he was crying too. And this is like, a 60-something-year-old guy.
Later in the day when I was doing eiken interviews (I'm helping kids prepare for the oral examination part of an English proficiency test), one of the girls I was interviewing happens to be one of the four that did the music arrangement, and she told me all of the backstory after I gushed for a bit about how completely amazing and awesome I thought they were. She said they were all so nervous and shaking, and that the reason most of them were crying was that they were so sad their friends from class 3-2 weren't there with them, it felt so empty and this was their last time ever singing in a chorus competition in our school before everybody goes away after graduation and it was so sad.
I didn't have the heart to tell her that I won't even be there in the spring...
Seriously, I'm bursting with pride about these kids who I spend half of my time wanting to defenestrate. I think they created a school legend today, in all honesty -- the kind of thing that they're going to remember for the rest of their lives, at least.
Anyway...
As for the rest of the day, I was at school fairly late working on some stuff for tomorrow (you wouldn't believe this but I hand-drew an entire picture for an activity, and it even looks GOOD, I'll have to try to scan it) and after work I went to Ueno and met up with![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
kawaru, who is in town for a few days for a CIR conference or something.
We went to Gyukaku for yakiniku. I'd actually never been there before, and quite frankly I think I prefer Anrakutei, at least the one in Akabane... it's about the same price but I like the food and atmosphere better at Anrakutei (plus they don't come up to you like "hey, do you guys need to order in English? 'cause I speak English..." at Anrakutei), and of course, drink bar. But Gyukaku is not necessarily bad. We split a "Super Big 500" -- they even have the same name for it -- and yay yakiniku.
After that, karaoke, but Craig could only stick around for an hour, so I mostly made him do lots of songs that require two people or harmony, like some HY, and Winding Road, and Seishun Amigo and stuff. And he picked How You Like Me Now for old times' sake or something. I can't rap, btw.
While we were standing outside Big Echo and I was staring at the price matrix and doing math in my head, some dude comes up like "Hey, do you need help?" and I basically looked at him with a "please die in a fire" glare like "No." He walked off. Craig was even like "WTF was THAT?"
So, home after that. I am not sure where the last 2 hours went. I have been reading news about that Ichihashi guy I guess, and listening to my kids' concert and so on. I'm pretty tired. Tomorrow will be tiring too :)
I don't talk about school much in public entries, but suffice it to say that our school has gone through a lot of crap in the last few weeks due to the flu outbreaks, having to cancel various events and classes and other stuff. We had to postpone our chorus competition until today -- and YESTERDAY, 4 confirmed cases of the "Type A" flu popped up in class 3-2, so they had to stay home today and for the next few days. So after all their work, they didn't get to perform.
In more craziness, the boy who was playing piano for class 3-3's second song ALSO had to stay home today because he was sick (whether it is flu or not, we don't know yet, but he had a headache yesterday and a fever today). And well, 3-3 didn't have a backup piano player -- the girl who played their first song hadn't rehearsed piano for the second song at all, and it was the special song, not the common song. (Every grade sang a song together, then each class in that grade had to sing that song to be judged by, as well as a special song that only that class would sing.)
You know what class 3-3 did? This morning at 8am when they found out they were without a piano player, 4 girls in the class spontaneously arranged an acapella backup line for their song. And the entire class got together and rehearsed it a few times in the morning with a few people taking on the extra acapella backup. And then they got up there and performed it in front of a full auditorium.
THEY WERE ABSOLUTELY AMAZING.
Yeah, there were slight mistakes in harmony and a few notes, but what can you expect after they rehearse with a piano for 3 months and suddenly have to perform a crazy different version on a few hours' notice?
I brought my little USB voice recorder with me and taped the entire concert and I've listened to class 3-3's song several times (am listening to the concert right now still) and I want to cry from how amazing they were and how proud I am of them.
The 3rd-years as a whole were singing a song after that as well, but about half the girls were crying so hard by the end of it that they couldn't sing. The girl conducting the song was waving her arms with tears running down her face.
Our principal went up to give a closing speech, but he was crying too. And this is like, a 60-something-year-old guy.
Later in the day when I was doing eiken interviews (I'm helping kids prepare for the oral examination part of an English proficiency test), one of the girls I was interviewing happens to be one of the four that did the music arrangement, and she told me all of the backstory after I gushed for a bit about how completely amazing and awesome I thought they were. She said they were all so nervous and shaking, and that the reason most of them were crying was that they were so sad their friends from class 3-2 weren't there with them, it felt so empty and this was their last time ever singing in a chorus competition in our school before everybody goes away after graduation and it was so sad.
I didn't have the heart to tell her that I won't even be there in the spring...
Seriously, I'm bursting with pride about these kids who I spend half of my time wanting to defenestrate. I think they created a school legend today, in all honesty -- the kind of thing that they're going to remember for the rest of their lives, at least.
Anyway...
As for the rest of the day, I was at school fairly late working on some stuff for tomorrow (you wouldn't believe this but I hand-drew an entire picture for an activity, and it even looks GOOD, I'll have to try to scan it) and after work I went to Ueno and met up with
kawaru, who is in town for a few days for a CIR conference or something.We went to Gyukaku for yakiniku. I'd actually never been there before, and quite frankly I think I prefer Anrakutei, at least the one in Akabane... it's about the same price but I like the food and atmosphere better at Anrakutei (plus they don't come up to you like "hey, do you guys need to order in English? 'cause I speak English..." at Anrakutei), and of course, drink bar. But Gyukaku is not necessarily bad. We split a "Super Big 500" -- they even have the same name for it -- and yay yakiniku.
After that, karaoke, but Craig could only stick around for an hour, so I mostly made him do lots of songs that require two people or harmony, like some HY, and Winding Road, and Seishun Amigo and stuff. And he picked How You Like Me Now for old times' sake or something. I can't rap, btw.
While we were standing outside Big Echo and I was staring at the price matrix and doing math in my head, some dude comes up like "Hey, do you need help?" and I basically looked at him with a "please die in a fire" glare like "No." He walked off. Craig was even like "WTF was THAT?"
So, home after that. I am not sure where the last 2 hours went. I have been reading news about that Ichihashi guy I guess, and listening to my kids' concert and so on. I'm pretty tired. Tomorrow will be tiring too :)
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I hope you visit us when we live in Japan so we can tell them not to talk to us in English instead of you. =p take some of the strain off XDD
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