To the Word through English

For the past month, Paul’s primary co-teacher has been very busy planning his school’s annual English festival. Since the middle school students were buried in exams last week, my school allowed me to attend the festival.

The school looked really impressive. The (second) big balloon was flying above the school (tied down, of course), and there were banners and smaller balloons everywhere. The walkway to the front door was lined with posterboard English presentations by each of the fifth and sixth grade classes.

Paul spent the festival emceeing the English performances in a large room inside the school while I wandered around, talking to students and taking pictures. A number of students had entered contests for speeches, storytelling, and singing. I watched a six year old give a speech introducing herself, a boy (dressed up as a turnip) tell a story about a turnip, and another boy sing that Paul Anka favourite, ‘Diana.’ Outside, the students played games like Simon Says, Whispering (like ‘telephone’), and Making Groups. The instructions were all in English. There were some mothers doing face painting (beautiful face painting), and, of course, ice cream for the kids to eat.

I was impressed by how many guests were there – teachers and principals and vice principals and officials from all sorts of places who were interested in the festival. Of course, it made Paul’s principal and vice-principal very happy – their school looked fantastic.

Even though it was a three-hour festival, it had both opening and closing ceremonies. All of the students gathered outside on the playground, facing a stage. Each of the classes stood in a line – boys in front, lined up from shortest to tallest – and girls in the back. The opening ceremony had speeches from the principal, vice principal, the head of the parent-teacher association, along with a few others – all in English. The closing ceremony included a mass-dance; all of the students wore red and blue gloves and waved their hands in the air. (This was performed to a remake of “Hey, Mickey.”) When the vice principal declared the beginning, ribbons shot out of the stage; when he declared the closing, a group of sixth-graders let balloons fly over the students. Paul, of course, was the emcee, and he read his script very slowly and very loudly.

The day before the festival, all of the school staff received shirts to wear that said, “Yukbuk Elementary School” on the front; on the back, they had the slogan for the festival, “To the World through English.” The shirts arrived at 2:30. At 4:00, they realized that the shirts actually said, “To the Word through English.” After a long deliberation, they decided to print pictures of a globe and tape them to each of the shirts to cover up the misprint. Of course, by the end of the festival, the globes had fallen from most shirts.


(If you want to see some pictures of the English festival, click on “Korean Photo Gallery” on the right side of the page.)