D'Oscars 2019

This week has been absolutely exhausting, mostly because of Friday evening, when the whole of Junior School was there until 9.30pm. It was of course the D'Oscars, our school's version of the Oscars ceremony.  All of the students in Junior School make mini movies and then there is a super grand ceremony to announce the winners.  It's a very long evening, and we have to sit with the kids, who end up getting extremely bored - especially if they just have to sit on a bench for 2 and a half hours watching other people win.  There are 8 categories, which to be honest is 4 too many; one for each year group, 3, 4, 5 and 6 - that's fine, I totally get that.  But then there is a category for overall performer - that's one child out of 500, an overall video from the 24 videos entered - a little unnecessary, a video winner from the other schools we have around the world - really no one cares about this as we don't know any of the students or teachers from the other schools, and a family category - this one I actually quite like.  The end family movie was amazing!  And it was won by a family with a child I know, so that was nice.  

Each category is judged by a real-life movie producer; some Chinese, some British, for example one category was judged by the man who produced Independence Day!  They send a video message, then someone from the school presents the 6 finalists, then the finalists are narrowed down to 3 and we catch clips from each.  Then the winner is announced and they come up on stage to get their D'Oscar trophy, then we watch the full winning video (up to 10 minutes long), then the two runners-up come up for their medals.  And that's just one category.  There were 8 categories!  Plus a 3 part movie (10 minutes each) made by the Head and Deputy Head of Junior School (actually very funny and well done).  Then there are thank you speeches.  It's a very long night!

The actual movie-making process starts in September and lasts quite a few weeks.  This year, the school really cut back on the movies taking up class time, which was much better, but last year it took over weeks and weeks of lesson time.  Last year, I spent 3 weeks with one EAL class just making their movie with them. It took every English lesson I had with them, every day, and then only one movie per class is chosen (not mine). What a waste of valuable learning time.  It does seem to be a bit parent-focused.  As you can tell, i'm not really a fan.  I don't appreciate my lessons being cancelled randomly so that kids can make movies.  I sound really boring, don't I!

Oh well, it's over for another year.  I'll only have one more to sit through before we leave China for good.  I slept until midday on Saturday to recover from this week!  Only 6 more weeks to go until the summer holidays, yay!

Here we are at Pie Society...