"what we have here is a failure to communicate"

Today was very trying.

Actually, there's been a snowball of little, irritating things over the last two months. This week, the irritation snowball reached a yard in diameter.

The main annoyance today was the English Camp meeting.

English Camp is where the 120 5th graders come to school on Saturday for a themed day chock full of learning and fun! We chose a camp-out theme and we were told to create six different stations with activities and new vocabulary.

The kids will be split into 10 groups with a dozen kids in each group. They'll rotate through the six stations, with 24 students at a station at a time.

These stations should last from 8:30 to noon - they'll spend about half an hour at each station with a 30 minute break thrown in somewhere.

Pikay (the P2 teacher) told us there should be an afternoon show from 2:00 until 3:30 or 4. From what she described, it sounded like a talent competition or a variety show... or perhaps a circus (like everything else around here). The important thing was that the kids use English.

We put our heads together and determined that the simplest thing to do would be to keep the kids in their small groups. Five camp songs will be performed, as well as five skits written by us. We'll alternate - skit, song, skit, song - to keep it interesting.

I typed up the afternoon schedule, listing the camp songs and providing the lyrics. I also gave a brief description of the storyline for each of the five skits. I handed two copies to Pikay at our English Camp meeting this afternoon. She looked at them, turned around to confer with the other Thai teachers, then turned back to us with a frown on her face.

"The principal don't like songs or role play. She's afraid some student don't practice talking."

Huh. We were under the silly, deluded impression that having kids act out plays or sing songs in English was a surefire way to make them practice speaking.

"Okay," Alyssa asked, "Can you tell us what they've done in past years that has worked?"

It took several minutes, and several repetitions of this question, before we could get a direct answer:

"Oh, I think two years ago they do song and role play."

We all gave each other bemused looks again. We were clearly missing something. The meeting ended with Pikay telling us she'd ask the principal again, showing her our plan this time.