Afterthoughts

　　Shuiwei Elementary School wore cowboy attire and went performed a horse-riding dance to reflect a cowboy style. We could tell that they prepared the clothes and dance for this activity. Their style was very cool and showy, and they danced very well. We hope Shuiwei Elementary School can win the number one prize.

Junliao Elementary School – Little Monster Beat Band

Expectation of Teachers and Students ~ Passionately Experience Local Culture

 　　Teacher Hsi-mei leads Junliao Elementary School students to participate in the parade activity every year, and this is her third time. She leads different upper-graders to join the parade every year. The teacher says that every villager coming to participate is very passionate and very humane. She is very happy to lead the students to experience community activities, and let students know more about hometown culture.

 　　They prepare a month before the performance. No student thinks of giving up during the practice process. Everyone voluntarily contributes and participates, and is proud of being a part of this. The theme is “Little Monster Beat Band”. In the beginning, no one could concentrate and would play the instruments randomly without following the instructions, so the teacher always got angry and yelled. Of course, that made students unhappy too. One week later, all students started to concentrate, and united to practice. The understanding among students started to grow. In the procedure from nothing to everything, many tools are missing, so they need to make their own tools and clothes. In order to make these by themselves, they need to first search what they have at home. Everyone shares the work with their imagination and creation, and works together to produce today’s excellent performance. The instructor feels that students can open their view by participating in this activity. Even if they do not win any prize, the most important thing is that they all have fun.

Afterthoughts

Nanchou Elementary School – Village Girl And Diabolo

Design Theme ~ Village Girl And Diabolo Show Simple Farmer’s Life

　　Nanchou Elementary School is the third preforming group. The performing theme is kids’ toys and women life. Their clothes and props combine with local famous fruits and vegetables to show the simplest farmers’ life.

Creation Procedure ~ Use old newspaper to create vegetables and fruits, and show the beauty of Hsichou villages

 　　The teacher says that the performing dancers are selected students who belong to the school dance club or are good at diabolo. With the teacher’s instruction, they are able to perform their best. The performance presents the daily life of the village children and women, for those we see in the rural place mostly are the hard-working farmers of the farm, busy women, and innocent children. During the entire process, no one has quit; instead, more students want to join, but the number has already been determined. The teacher takes a bamboo hat worn by a student. She points to a decoration on the hat and says it is one of the apparels the volunteer moms spend many days to make. There are agricultural products of Hsichou on the decoration, such as orange, rice, and more. The volunteer moms wrapped the used newspapers, layer by layer, to create fruits and vegetables shape, coated them with colorful pigments, and carefully glued them into the bamboo hats after drying. It took a lot of time making the fruits and vegetables! Isn’t it similar to the rural life where volunteer moms make props with their own hands and children play in the performance!

Afterthoughts

 　　We almost failed in the process of interviewing Nanchou Elementary School, since their leading teacher was too busy to be interviewed. Fortunately, the teacher finally pushed away everything for our interview. We were very happy after finishing the interview. The teacher did not get impatient by our interruption on his work, and still patiently answered every question. This was a nice experience.

TOP

Chiaoyi Elementary School – Musical Dream team and auspicious lion dance team

Musical Dream Team
Design Theme ~ Use Ocarina to Compose Village Folk Songs

　　　Chiaoyi Elementary School assigns two teams to participate in this activity. One is the Musical Dream team, which mostly performs with ocarinas and bamboo flutes. They dress as guards of honor and wear tall peaked feather hats. They also wear pretty puffy skirts. They use the sweet, simple and clean tone of the ocarina to share happy village folk songs with everyone, and to help recall everyone’s memory of the past.

Auspicious Lion Dance Team
Design Theme ~ Lion Dance Brings out the Happy Atmosphere of A Village Temple Fair

　　Lion Dance team uses body actions with a drumbeat rhythm to bring out the happy atmosphere of a village temple festival for everyone to experience. These eight auspicious lions are no worse than any professional one.

Design Progress ~ Show the value of cooperation

　　The leading teacher of Chiaoyi Elementary School says that in the practicing and making of props and clothes, he cannot avoid working with a few uncooperative students. He lets these students stay aside to learn how others do it. He also teaches them how to resolve the conflicts between academic work and activity. This method is called “Creative Popularity Harvest”.  This method teaches students how to work together and form a group with good understanding within a short month

Afterthoughts

　　We were very glad to be able to interview the leading teacher of Chiaoyi Elementary School. In the beginning, since the activity was too loud to hear any voices, we had to change to a different place to overcome this difficulty. Chiaoyi Elementary School only has one class for each grade, but they assigned two teams to participate. This spirit of assertively supporting local activity is worthy for everybody to learn. We hope there will be more people to join next year.

Hsinmin Elementary School–Iron Robot, Rigid Outside And Soft Inside

Design Theme ~ Invincible Iron Robot Model Goes with Violin Playing to Show the Beauty of Rigid Outside And Soft Inside

　　The most proper way to describe the students from Hsinmin Elementary School is “little kids with high ambitions”. Their instructor gets a whim to use the “Invincible Iron Robot” model to go with violin music. They want to show the intrepid appearance of a robot with the soft tone of violin. This gives people a feeling of a rigid outward appearance with an amiable inward character.

Activity Process ~ First parade experience with confidence

　　For all elementary school students, this is their first performance. Students look nervous, but are still confident. This helps yield a performance with good results and much effort. Additionally, the teacher is very confident with the team too. Every student works very hard to prepare and practice for this activity; winning no longer seems important to them. Everyone is surprised by the performance. Even our little reporter is wondering how a robot can play the violin.

Afterthoughts

Hsiyang Junior High School – Artist of Vitalization

Design Theme ~ Awaken the Hakka Culture

Design Process ~ Farmer tank shows vitality of village

　　All participating students are members of school clubs. They are all happy to have such a chance to join the parade activity. They put in many efforts on their makeup in the formal performance. There are many special patterns drawn on their faces. They carry the props they made by themselves. There are some extraordinary arrangements in their team formation. Someone dances in the front and shuffles back and forth among the farmers who hold scarecrows. There is a big ox-cart at the end. We can tell that they have prepared very completely for this huge team. They use their club time to make all props including dolls bearing bamboo weavings and colorful wooden ox-carts. They practice very hard to complete the entire parade. Most of the members are participating for the first time. Even though they do not have experience, they are willing to carry bamboo made of environmentally friendly materials and dance in their own creative dance to bring a big surprise to the crowds.

 　　In this interview, I learned the importance of teamwork. Without a strong united power, they cannot complete this performance. Maybe they did not know each other before, but they worked together to give their best show. They finished their practices in very limited time. With the props they had prepared, they showed their creativity and ideas. For instructors, it does not matter if they finally win the prize or not; the students’ participation is much more important than the final result.