So it's the end of the school year and time to see off the current batch of third year students. My school organized a farewell ceremony for the kids before their final exams, but as luck would have it, the school was caught up in an influenza outbreak that week and was forced to let the junior students home early so the third year students wouldn't fall sick before their high school entrance exams. As a result the farewell ceremony was postponed until everyone's exams were over. Maybe its due to the string upperclassman-lowerclassman culture they have here that they go to such lengths to celebrate the last few weeks of school for the graduating classes. The first and second years got together to perform for the third years, from the relatively tame group song and brass band performance to a Power Rangers-style skit (including costumes) and a full on Japanese cheer squad. Of course there were messages from teachers who had transferred to other schools, as well as a powerpoint slide show of embarrassing photos of the graduands from when they first started classes.
What I thought was pretty cool was the huge murals all the second year students constructed out of paper and cellophane. They put up black curtains in the sports hall and let the light stream through the colored cellophane, creating a stained glass effect:
Nice touch for the actual graduation ceremony.I don't recall there being such formality when I was in school; when I left, all I had to do was pick up my results sent from Cambridge and that was it. I think having over 350 students in any batch of graduating classes puts any such ceremony firmly in the too hard basket. Here it's way more involved, but I suppose from the kids' perspective its something that's happening to them for the first time, so it's special. All in the name of building school spirit, huh?
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