- Ryunosuke Satoro
Our annual day is a huge event and it’s not about the individual students, teachers or trainers, it is about the collective effort. In a river or an ocean, you cannot tell which drop is more important and which one is less. Every drop has a role to play and every drop is equally important! But for some of us it takes time to realize and understand this.
When we started the annual day preparations, we soon started getting telephone calls and personal requests from some parents asking their child to be given some ‘important role’. With due respect to parent’s feelings for wanting his/her child to get maximum exposure on stage, I would like to state something which I told these anxious parents – it is not the length of the role that matters. The entire event is a learning experience. Irrespective of their role, the children get lessons in cooperation and coordination. They learn to follow group instructions. They learn to be alert for their cue to enter and exit the stage. They learn that practice makes a man perfect. They begin to understand nuances of body language, gesture and expressions. All this apart from creative expressions and sheer joy of performance.The team effort is vital to this. Brian McBride, the well-known American footballer once said - “It’s not any one person. It’s not any one coach. It’s the team.” I hope all of the parents would appreciate the truth in this quote.
At the same time, we have tried to be sensitive towards the interests and capabilities of the children. A tough task because sometimes the interest is there but the child is unable to deliver for some reason or the other. We’ve had children looking to dance but when they are made to do so the body is just not flexible enough or the movements are not fluid enough- whereas the same child may be brilliant in emoting scenes. Then, it is the most unenviable task of the teacher concerned to gently make the child realize his strength and motivate him to give his best to whatever he is doing – happily. I quote the words of Elbert Hubbard here : It does not take much strength to do things, but it requires great strength to decide on what to do. To us, every child is equally important and parents must understand that we have to take care of all our kids equally. We want all of them to excel and we try to nurture their natural talents as much as possible.
I hope your kids will grow wiser and learn a lot through this whole process. The D-day is approaching fast and our hearts have started beating faster in excitement and anticipation. Like Aamir Khan, we also keep our hands on our heart and keep soothing ourselves by saying “All is Well!“
To give you a glimpse of what we have been doing, we uploaded some fine moments captured during the preparation of the event, these pictures were shot when our kids were busy learning about their roles, visit our Gallery for the Pics of “Making of Annual Function 2010″ Please leave your comments & let us know how you find them.
We look forward to your presence at our Annual Function.
Sincerely,