Stage Challenge Write-up

 Friday was Stage Challenge Day for my school and it was an exceedingly long, fun, exhausting day. Starting with getting on the bus at 7.40am and I didn't get back home until after midnight. (This makes me wish teachers got paid overtime - Stage Challenge in the past few weeks would have added a hefty wad of cash to my pay! - I guess we do get the holidays so can't complain too much.)

It was my first Stage Challenge ever, I had seen Stage Challenge before but never participated in one or been there for the whole day. The atmosphere was pretty amazing - lots of chanting, dancing and singing between rehearsals and meetings. It was pretty lovely to see all the students getting along with each other and being really supportive and encouraging. Even though this is only my second year at the school I knew a pretty high proportion of the students involved and have gotten to know heaps of the others. They are such a bunch of sweeties. They were adorably sweet to us teachers. They cheered us and there were many hugs and high-fives going around. When the other teacher in the crew and myself had to leave the backstage area and go into the auditorium, all the crew and performers cheered and put their hands out for us to touch as we went passed. Yay for Rock Star-esque teaching moments.

I kind of want to teach at a school where it is only the nice Drama and nerdy type students. None of the thugs and bullies. It would be heavenly. Teachers would be smiling and stress-free people who felt loved and appreciated rather than the wound-up ticking stress-bombs we so often seem to be.

I was expecting some sort of behind-the-scenes nastiness or major disasters to occur but the day went off pretty smoothly. The only stressful moment was when the on the bus when there was a sudden panic that 2 Year 9 students weren't on any of the buses. I think it turned out that they had gone home with one the mothers or something. We actually lost over a bus worth of senior students to the allure of Wellington city on Friday night*. The Teacher-in-charge had predicted this and booked one less bus for the return journey. I had been a little worried because I thought that most of the little darlings would be too tired to do anything except fall asleep on the bus ride home - wrong.

We didn't get a placing but there were heaps of prizes spread around so noone went home empty handed. I'm not really surprised that we didn't win because there were some pretty awesome entries this year. I was surprised that HIBs didn't win because their performance was 'teh awesome'. I guess judging is pretty difficult and I'm not entirely sure what their criteria is to be honest.

* Teenagers never cease to amaze me with their tireless energy when it comes to doing things they enjoy. After buzzing around dancing, chanting, cheering and yelling for over 16 hours, they naturally had to go off to sneak into clubs and paint the town red. Yet this energy never seems to appear when it comes to writing essays or doing study.