Lulaby on Broadway

14:45 23 November 2008

I got dragged to a leadership club that my friend Saori holds in our village at the Dotz (Dietskovo Tsentr- Children’s center that caters to under-18 extracurricular activities of a wide array) to help lead a session with her but instead got roped into a much larger project. When we got to the club, five of the members (of the six there) were engrossed in conversation, upon inquiring Saori and I were informed that there will be an oblast-wide (An oblast is administrative region like a state- there are 7 in the country) Children’s Issues conference in Karakol shortly and that they had been tasked with coming up with a creative way to introduce our Rayon (county) to the conference in under five minutes. They had a variety of songs, raps, and recitations that they wanted to perform and amazingly solicited the “expertise” of Saori and me to offer feedback on what they had so far.

I was amazed at the faith that they put in the suggestions that Saori and I put forth, considering that I had just met them less than an hour ago. I guess that something that comes with being a foreigner, and more importantly, a volunteer, is an assumption of outside expertise and knowledge that can be useful to them. Fortunately, in this case, they were at least somewhat right. I drew on my previous musical theatre experience and helped them do some basic choreography to compliment their stage presence and introduced an idea that they liked so much they decided to close their presentation with it- an acrostic poem to Жети-Өгуз, the name of the Rayon, there are eight total people making the presentation to I recommended they each have one of the letters under their coats an reveal them all at the same time.

It was a small thing to do, but it was really nice to see the incredible respect I was afforded and actually see my ideas come into effect (I met with them again yesterday). It can be frustrating being a teacher, often times I feel like my student make little to no tangible progress and it was nice to have some I could see the difference I had made. Needless to say, it was an immensely satisfying activity and I hope to be able to see the actual presentation.