Day 18

Today I felt a lot more productive in the classroom.

Ed asked me to take the Fairy Godmothers and one of the Cinderellas out in the hall to work on their scene. The challenge was one of the Fairy Godmothers (We will call her N) was in a horrible mood and refused to act. So I think he had no idea what to do with her except to give her one on one attention or something.

So I took them out into the hall and tried to work on their scene. N would read her lines...but not at all in a loud or fairy godmother like way. I kept trying to tell her to please act for me. But she wouldn't. So I asked them all to put their scripts down and stand in a circle. And I asked them to put their hands in the middle. Then we kind of did this shaking head, blowing out lips sort of thing (I was making it up as I went!) and we did jazz fingers with our hands. I was trying to get them energized. It broke the ice a little bit. N wasn't so pissed at the world. Then I asked them to try the scene again and somehow N was a little bit better! But not where I wanted her to be yet. I made all three girls (both fairy godmothers and the Cinderella) float/walk around the hall like the fairy godmother. They liked acting silly together, which of course made them all laugh. I told N to act like a ballerina...which made her actually look like a fairy godmother! Yay! Then I told them they needed to have a smile in their voice when playing the fairy godmother and showed them how. I then asked if we could try the scene again. N asked if we could sit down. I said only if she would do the fairy godmother voice. And that was the final breaking of the ice...letting her do a small thing that she wanted to do. After that she was as committed to being a fairy godmother as a 4th grader can. I felt very successful. We went back into the room and they performed their scene better than they had before and N had lost her attitude.

Also I lead a game called "Falling Numbers". It was a hit with the kids. Everyone gets a number...like 1-17. There is one caller (which was me). The numbers walk around the room. When the caller calls out a number, whoever has that number has to slowly fall to the ground. The other people in the room have to try to catch that person before they fall to the ground. If they get caught, they get to stay in the game. If they don't get caught, then they are out. Ed and Marea seemed to like the game and let me play it with them after lunch and at the end of the day.

Lunch was fun today too. All the interns are taking turns doing an activity after lunch. This week two interns are doing dances from around the world. Monday was India (I think), Tuesday was Indonesia, Wednesday was Africa, and Today was America (Appalachian). So today we did a line dance and it was so tiring! But this week has been very successful with these dances! I have no idea what I am going to do when it becomes my turn.

So today Sean told me that Ed does enjoy working with me! And that he would love me to work with him on Honk Jr. Which is a three week program/musical at the end of my internship. Ed is very independent but he is slowly letting me help him with things. So just imagine what he will be letting me do with 3 weeks.

Today we also had Leah's high school group come down and watch our performance. They were a great audience! They thought the 4th-6th graders were very cute. Which is very very true. My job during the show is to play the CD that has 3 of the songs (Owl City's "Real World", Lady Gaga's "Born This Way", and the Minuet from Cinderella/Taio Cruz's "Dino-mite" that Ed mixed together.)

Tomorrow is the showing! Should be fun. I am really hoping Ed will let me take some photos/videos...but I don't know. So we'll see.

Talk to you all tomorrow!