by Matt Berman

"The reward of a thing well done is to have done it." --Ralph Waldo Emerson

Wow! The 4th graders did a stunning job with both performances of their play, Son of the Dragon. Their amazing accomplishment was all the more impressive given they wrote every single word of the script, the songs, the melodies, the accompaniments, made their own costumes and props, did the choreography, much of the direction, and ran the lights and sound. This was a truly student-made production.

Student-made? What exactly does that mean?

Well, take this as an example. Here is a clip of one of the songs from the show. In this scene, the evil sorceress Nimue is enchanting Merlin into a permanent sleep. You see two children, in costumes they made themselves. They have just finished some dialog, from the script the class wrote. Now they sing a song -- the students wrote the lyrics, the melody, and created the accompaniment, which you will hear students playing (you can catch a glimpse of the players towards the end). You'll even see some choreography which they created.

I wonder if you've ever thought about why the 4th grade does this project each year, and why they do it the way they do. Two to three weeks of half-days is a sizable chunk of time -- what makes it worth the while? Along with the other two big projects of the second half of the year, the storybook and the report, they learn a lot, some obvious, some not so much. While there are obvious academic reasons for the play culminating the yearlong theme of The Path of the Hero, the most important things they get from this experience are not academic. Here are just a few of the things the children gain from this experience:

• Perhaps most importantly they learned a lesson that many of us didn't grasp until we were much older -- that working really hard for an extended period of time on doing something really well, and sticking with it to completion, persevering through discouragement and difficulty, FEELS REALLY GOOD! Several of the children this morning talked about how, while it was great to get praise from their parents, they already knew they had done a good job and didn't need anyone to tell them. They were floating on air, high as kites, as we're sure you noticed on the way home.
• They learned that, by working together and persevering, they can accomplish amazing things, things that no one (including sometimes themselves) thought they could do. If you stop to think about it, the idea of a gang of 10-year-olds writing, composing, directing, choreographing, and performing a full-length musical play is absurd, the stuff of corny old Judy Garland / Mickey Rooney movies, not real life. We're sure some of you heard from them during the process -- we'll never be able to do it, it will be terrible, etc. Now your children know better, and they will leave fourth grade with an incredible sense of confidence in their own and their classmates' abilities.
• Doing it all themselves -- no storebought play, no canned songs, no adult-made scenery, a show completely their own, unique and never to be repeated -- gives them a sense of their own growing powers, and of their ability to be independent. Yes, they really can do hard things for themselves, and succeed brilliantly.
• The process, which includes unexpected and mostly gender-blind casting, pushing themselves beyond their own comfort levels, throwing themselves into risky activities such as singing and dancing in front of an audience, working without a net (no teacher with a script prompting them), relying on each other and covering each other's mistakes (did you hear about the amazing feat in the morning performance?), making up lines and bits on the fly, ad-libbing, improvising, playing multiple parts, projecting to an audience without mics, adding things, dropping things, writing things that end up not being used, changing and changing again, and so much more, all bring on a sense of teamwork, trust in themselves and each other, and a ready flexibility that will stand them in good stead in many future non-theatrical endeavors.
• The process of writing the script and songs engages a deeper level of critical thinking about the myths. They didn't just tell the story, they found the humor in it, humor that grew out of absurdities and contradictions inherent in the stories but which often pass unnoticed when the stories are just read.

Here's another clip -- the finale of the play.

Listen to The Holy Grail

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