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Wednesday, February 13, 2013

10 Learning from art



The work that children wrote included values as friendship, cooperation,  peace and they wrote it in a way that made laugh and cry to their parents, but especially surprised to directors and other teachers.

The story is simple, it focuses on a girl who arrived from a faraway country, she feels lost in the world, without sharing the language of the place, but with a great smile to find friends, obsessed with a hot dog with peanut butter that helps her to start her search for a place among a group of children who did not believe that monsters could have pink eyes. All that just to say: friendship, peace, and cooperation are the best way to solve the world's problems.

Each kid contributed at any part, some sang, some danced, some acted, I discovered that all are good for something, for example the backdrop of the work was beautifully decorated with bitten marshmallows, and the monster’s eyes were petals of roses. My main assistant had everything on time and in order and costumes could not be better because each child decided what they wanted to wear and thus could see costumes from each of their countries, which painted a multicolored party event.

I discovered director didn’t trust me!. Our work was left at the end of the program, hoping that parents do not feel ashamed of artistic deficiency of their children, because my group was listed as low-profile. It was not clear to me what that meant until Director, grabbed me by the arm and whispered to me: How did you make this children acting?.

Fortunately at the same time a mother hugged me so strong that you can imagine that my eyes balls were ready to jump and would have to run after them, because I couldn’t see without them. When she finally stop it she gave me a kiss and crying said: I did not know that Mita could sing so pretty!. 

When Joseph’s father reached his son, not only congratulated him, he said that he was proud of him. If a play allowed us to learn vocabulary, spinning ideas, sequences of events, work verbs, launch cooperative work, develop our creativity and... pouf! I can follow the list, for the first time feel a release of my fear of all its cultural wealth... these children had taught me most of what I learned in all my years of boring classes.

I followed with my eyes carefully as Hanna danced among her sisters, but then  I felt a tug on my sleeve, Erick had a handful of marshmallows bitten and asked me with a smile: teacher, would you like to help me with the backdrop?, I said: of course, since you did not let me help to  prepare it!. I could not believe that I was eating marshmallows and they tasted as a glory!, that handful of sugar were an Oscar Award for me.

I was moving to the door when I saw Gaby sitting in the farthest seat from the stage. I could not believe that she was there, with her high heels shoes and her silk dress!. She stretched the program and told me: Can you give me your signature, please?, I smiled as few times I had done so and when she reached the pen, the Director stood in the middle of we both  and said: "well done, it surprised to all of us, I want you to tell me what you did with these children". I was ready to reply when Gaby said with a soft voice: "He believed in them". 

The Director looked at her with a bad mood, and point her with an Iphone and almost ordered her: "I want you to plan courses for the spring, it seems that you have something that helps teachers".

When we leave, everything looked different.