large group fun

So this session is going to be mayhem. We are breaking our record for most students by a few hundred: 980 students. Normally we have 2 to 300, so this should be fun. For this session, I am in charge of large group. The students have classes of about 40-50 where their facilitator has lesson plans and what not and then three times a day, all the students get together for large group. This session, because of the massive number of them, the students will be broken into 5 groups which we label with colors. Each color will have around 200 students, broken into about 5 classes of 50. Three times a day every student in that color will get together for large group. I will be leading all the large group activities of two colors and some of a third, and another facilitator will do the other two colors and some of the third. So basically, we are responsible for 2.5 colors. Confused? Good. Now try being a part of our staff planning meetings.

Anyway, since I am technically in charge of all the large groups for all the colors, I am giving the large group curriculum a long overdue overhaul. This isn't without it's troubles. What we do in large group is practice diction, read inspirational Chicken Soup-esque stories that we call Morning Motivationals to keep morale high and listen to famous speeches and fairy tales. That's where it gets fun. The second week is a doozy for both facilitators and students as we listen to Martin Luther King's "I have a Dream" speech for two days and then Robert F. Kennedy's "Remarks on the Assassination of MLK" speech. This entails a great deal of civil rights coverage which the students could quite frankly, care less about. Think about it, what do you know and/or care about 1960's China? King's speech is also especially difficult for a non native speaker, filled with fiery Southern vernacular to put it simply. I have tried to bring this point up again and again and it's been shot down for political reasons by teammates who share the hue (not to mention the view) of King. This summer, being in charge of overhauling this, I have decided to ignore the torpedoes and full speed ahead. I replaced the two days of civil rights and "I Have a Dream" with Joshua Chamberlain's "Why We Fight" speech from the movie Gettysburg and then follow it up the next day with Abraham Lincoln's "Gettysburg Address." Later in the week, RFK kept his slot and the civil rights has been cut down and merged in there. I think this works out because it creates an overarching theme for the students to put together, rather than a bunch of random speeches. We have Chamberlain urging men to fight to make others free, Lincoln urging their sacrifice to not be in vain and then RFK carries it into the 20th century. Besides at least this way, I don't have to listen to 200 Chinese students trying to imitate the Southern drawl of MLK. I think it's a good plan and so far, the planets have aligned, because admin team is agreeing to it. For now.

...but I'm sure I'm still an evil racist.