Today the PRC students graduated from their prep course to the Uni. When I step in for work, this was one of those projects that was 'conveniently' handed to me. Luckily everyone that I worked with is doing this for the first time. As the overall in charge of the ceremony, I frankly did very little. In fact I was worrying the past few days is there something important I should be doing but not done?
The ceremony lack any guest of honour because they all backed out last minute. My dear boss didn't even inform me that she's not coming. But the show still went on. The highlight of the ceremony definitely is the skits put up by the students themselves to show off how much their English has improved! Very very very creative! To put up 8 skits in a row can be very draggy but this is definitely not. Skits include things like:
- Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai Brokeback Mountain edition
- The classic TV scene, remember a tv and people playing out inside the screen? I always love the 'advertisements'
- My personal favourite is the recital at the end. Recited and written by the students in an English standard far better than the above average Singapore student and accompanied by a video montage of the photos they took from the start when they signed the contract to come to Singapore to the various activities that took place during their course. My title came from one of the quotes they used. I'm really very much touched despite this is the third time I'm seeing it (I attended the previous two rehearsals). It is a really good ending to the ceremony.
It has been a very long time since I've seen such things put up by students. I remember when I was studying, there used to be things like English Drama Week and students will put up skits as competition during assembly. But somehow as the years went on, such things seemed to be lost. When I was teaching there was no such things at all. In fact, assemblys were rare and even if there were, it's because we use it to celebrate events or make annoucements. Today's graduation ceremony just showed that if given the right push, students can actually come up with very creative ideas, they can be imaginative if we allow them to. I'm sure that goes the same for our local students.
I would say that it went very well although it lacked the element of grandness and solemn feel that a graduation ceremony should have. To me, it is a success because these students owned the day and took pride in it. There are singing talents, dancing talents, musical instrument talents, video editing talents, photo taking talents etc just that we do not have time to showcase every single one.
Oh and I must mention this: during the ceremony there was a lapse in timing. During the empty space, the course coordinator made an appeal to the students for someone to come perform. It didn't take long and a boy stood up, came to the front, took the microphone and started singing American Pie. He may have forgotten some of the lyrics but the sporting spirit is definitely commendable. If this had been a local bunch of students, I'm sure all will just sit there waiting to see which idiot (if any at all) would volunteer himself. I see why these PRC students are the cream of the crop (albeit only the 2nd layer) and it is no wonder why. In a big country, if you don't stand out above the rest, you are nothing.
Today had been a good day.
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