Shakespeare Club

In this activity, I, along with the group, went to Precious Blood Primary School to teach secondary school students English and Drama over a six week period. Every week, I was not assigned to the same group, and this prevented me from forming a connection with one set of students, however, it did help me figure out ways to help students of different abilities and requirements. This was the first time I had done a purely teaching role, and it also gave me the chance to figure out my teaching style.

It was not an easy task because every group had students who would rather do as they pleased while I tried to teach them the pronunciation of words or how to stage a scene. I had to remember not to lose my cool at them and do something interesting to get their attention back to what I was teaching them. Probably the biggest hurdle I faced in this experience was language. Their first language was Chinese while mine was English, and I did not know how to speak in Chinese. Sometimes, my partner would be someone who knew how to speak in Chinese so it became easier to converse, but other times I had to try and simplify my words, and think of synonyms to words that I thought were simple enough, to help them understand what I was saying.

I also had to be professional but connect with the students on their level to let them tell me what they were thinking and help them follow my instructions to the best of their abilities.

This experience helped me figure out the challenges of teaching and how hard the job really is and the last minute changes you might have to do to a plan because of unforeseen problems. 

A Play in a Week - The Faust Way Student Leader

For CAS Week this year, I participated in being a Student Leader for the Year 8 Create series, specifically for creating a play in a week in collaboration with Faust. I was excited to share the little drama knowledge I had acquired over the years with the Year 8 students, probably rehearsing for their first ever play, and having only a week to create it.

It wasn't an easy experience. There were stressful times and times when I felt frustrated by the lack of focus by the students, but I learnt to deal with that and focus on the positive thoughts and the constructive feedback that I thought would help in making them better actors and the play better. My co-student leader and I decided to take voice workshops to help the students speak louder with clear diction when they were not in the auditorium rehearsing. This helped them on stage and saved the Director and Assistant Director time from teaching them the same things again.

This was a learning curve for me too, because I was part of the production team for the first time where I had to take care of sound and watch out for cues to see to it that the actors got their cues for sound. It was as nerve-racking as acting and very stressful too, but it gave me an opportunity to experience a different side of theatre, one that I was very interested in, and helped me also build on skills that I had learnt during the leader in Improv Club and test it over a one week, more strenuous period.