Yes Culture Fair

For the past several weeks at Yes, my school, we have been preparing for the Cultural Fair. The different classes were assigned different English Speaking countries to present on. My students were able to choose their own topic, clothing, music, food ect and then they had to research that topic. Once the research was complete we began working on their speaches and the posters and decorations. Most of my students are really beginners, so the idea of speaking in English infront of other people was pretty terrifing, but I helped as best as I could and we worked on pronunciation and we practiced their speaches in class. Yesterday was the fair. They were all told to be there at 8:30am....so around 9:30 they began showing up. (Except for Enrique, who was there before I was at 8:30am...I am pretty sure that he is not really Brasilian). They had a lot of work to do, decorating the classrooms and last minute preparation for the speaches. I have six different classes broken up into three different countries, so I had to be everywhere at once. My Jump In class is made up of 11-14 year olds, so they require a lot of attention anyway, but then some of the adults didn't feel comforitable with their speaches yet, and everyone needed tape or markers or scissors or something. But for me, I was in my element, I really loce that type of stress and excitement.

The presentations were suppose to start at 10:00am...so around 10:45am Bruno (the director) began rounding people up to get started. Everyone did really well, and I know that some of them were so nervous...even though the audience was really just the other students and teachers. Ever few parents came, but Kelly and Lance did, and they were pulled into the USA picture, being that they are actually from the USA. Some people brought in traditional food from their countries. There was this really strange dessert sitting by the Australia table...it looked like an apple upside down cake....Kelly asked me, mmm...is that a traditional Australia dessert..."no, It's from the US...it's apple pie." "Oh." she said back and we looked at each other and tried not to laugh.

My Speak Out 1 class presented on Canada...they are the first level of adult students. Big Leo, from across the street and my friend Aline are both in this group. Speak Out 2...the next level up, presented on Ireland. This group includes my friends Alex and Enrique.

The presentations were all great. Afterwards I started the clean up process. I began ripping down streamers before Bruno told me that we were going to save them...we saved the streamers...

The day was really fun, and it was good to have all of my students (well most of my students) all in the same place at the same time.