Children's Day

Children’s Day

In Thailand, Children’s Day is a national event that falls on the second Saturday in January every year.  The Friday before Children’s Day has been designated Students’ Day at our school, with games, entertainment, and prize drawings. This year, several elementary classes (pratom) gave dance performances. Students in the upper grades (mattayom) had booths or stalls with games where you could test your skills or try your luck to win prizes.

Arriving at school on Students’ Day, I was pleasantly surprised by how colorful it all was, in contrast to regular school days.  Students who would be performing later in the morning were wearing their costumes and makeup. The other students were wearing ordinary clothes instead of their uniforms, that is, clothes of many colors rather than all the same. Here are the students gathered for the daily flagpole ritual and speech from the school principal:

To emphasize that the students are the most important people on Students’ Day, most teachers (except me) wore student uniforms; women in the white blouses and blue skirts that the girls wear on Mondays, and male teachers in white shirts and brown shorts.

Dance performances by student groups were scheduled throughout the morning, beginning with the youngest students and continuing through Grade 6. I made way too many videos of students dancing but am posting only two, both by students in some of my classes – not that I had any role in their practice sessions or rehearsals.  On the contrary, I was surprised to learn how many students in my Levels 4 and 5 were performing in dance groups. The first video below is a short excerpt from the performance by Level 4.

The next video is from the performance by students from Level 5, who had much flashier costumes than Level 4, but also the ongoing danger of wardrobe malfunctions. The theme of cross-dressing, noted in a couple of earlier posts, shows up here as well. Can you tell which three dancers are boys?

In between performances I browsed game booths, which included musical chairs (shades of my one-room country school!), opportunities to win prizes by throwing balls to knock down bottles or dolls, and one in which contestants blow powdered sugar off a small object on a plate and then pick it up with their teeth.

The game in the photo below is familiar, though I can't remember what it's called, so I named it Balloon Stomp.

Prize drawings throughout the morning kept students milling around the stage hoping to win snacks or a toy.  After the dance performances were finished, there were opportunities to win prizes by playing Balloon Stomp or Musical Chairs.

The day ended with a prize drawing for a new bicycle donated by the school principal – the big event that everyone had been waiting for. The first students whose names were called must have already gone home, since they did not come forward.  Watch what happened next:

The girl whose name was read out after the toss is one of those students everyone wants more of -- always eager to participate in class, high achieving, a frequent winner for her summaries of the stories read during morning flagpole time (described in an earlier post, “Flagpole Tales”), and just a really great kid to have around.  You’ll recognize her from the Level 4 dance performance, above.

It was fun to see how much the students enjoyed Students’ Day, and especially to see them working together in their performances. Whatever you may think of their costumes and the dance moves, it seems clear to me that the students were really just having a great time, and were proud to show off how well they had learned their routines. It makes me want to make language teaching more like the arts, where students become so engaged in the creative process that they forget they’re learning something. Easier said than done, huh.

The following day, January 11^th, was Children’s Day in Thailand. Government offices in larger towns and cities are open to children and their families on that day, with opportunities for children to be the Thai equivalent of Mayor for a Day, for example.  This year the government announced, with apologies, that Children’s Day activities in Bangkok would be curtailed “because of security concerns” related to ongoing political protests and demonstrations.  Both the Caretaker Prime Minister, Yingluck Shinawatra, and the leader of the anti-government protest demonstrations, Suthep Thaugsuban, published slogans that encapsulate their advice to children.

Ms Yingluck’s 2014 slogan for children is: Be grateful. Know your duty. Be good. Have discipline. Make Thailand strong.  Mr. Suthep’s is: Think smart, love the country, love the King, be honest, and stay Thai. – Words that the two leaders might want to take to heart themselves.

If you wish, you can click on the link below to see a Bangkok Post article for students, in “Easy English” and with many pictures, about Children’s Day 2014.

http://www.bangkokpost.com/learning/easier-stuff/330581/new-generation-takes-over-for-a-day