In June 2016, Miss Sunny Chen, the teacher from Guang-Jheng Middle School in Da-Li, Taichung, contacted Kang-Shen Publishers of EFL textbooks, and had me help her organize a Readers Theater presentation with the students for next term. On Wednesday, July 20th, I began the first of four weekly three-hour workshops at the school that had me coach students in the Readers Theater last year. Other teachers who had assisted her last year, were too busy and begged off the project; she really needed my help.
I gave Sunny a selection of Readers Theater scripts from the internet and a script, "Child Labour," I have had since FDR High School days, from Lost Futures:The Problem of Child Labor. It was one of the resources I used with the Bread & Roses Curriculum and club. I never had the chance to use the script though. We may use it now with her Readers Theater troupe. If so, I will have to edit it down to six minutes and the maximum eight players. I added "We're Not Gonna Take It" by Twisted Sister as the musical kicker.
I made Sunny and the troupe aware that I have a silk screen frame for a Sweatfree T-shirt the children could use to make costumes for the presentation. It would be like having a Bread & Roses Club in Taiwan!
On the morning of July 28, 2016, I returned for the second workshop with the students from Guang- Jheng Middle School. I had been asked in June to help prepare the students over the summer for the contest to be held in November 2016. Originally, I thought of using “Child Labour,” but when I introduced it to the twelve students in the troupe the previous week, along with the Christmas Carol script I had saved from a Readers’ Theater troupe I advised a few ago, it didn’t get a good reaction; some thought it would be too hard and no fun. They liked Christmas Carol better, and so, though their teacher, Sunny Chen, had gone ahead and copied the eight-page play, she rush-copied Christmas Carol, too.
With scripts in hand, I assigned roles to all twelve students, making four understudies, and we read through the script, giving intonation that they repeated. I even some choreographic suggestions such as lying on the floor holding a pantomime flower on my chest to suggest a deceased Scrooge in “Christmas future.” The students were motivated and ready to do it, but there was one problem. The skit I brought was from another local school that might want to keep it for themselves. When I got home, I checked my Education-Emancipation-Organization blog to find the post I’d written about Christmas Carol. I found it, sure enough, and realized it was from Shwang-Wen Middle School, done two years ago, and they had won third place in their region with it. We couldn’t really do it without permission. I asked Sunny Chen to investigate and make sure we could. She asked a few teaching colleagues and all agreed: only a modified Christmas Carol would do.
At the second workshop, I shared the dilemma we had with the students. Though Sunny could have chosen one of dozens of other Readers’Theater skits from the internet, she went with my gut feeling that Child Labour would be a good one, and so It was modified into a six-minute, eight student skit. The students went along with it, took out the copies they had previously been given, and we began a first read-through modifying the script as we went, with the students making adjustments on their script. I asked for and they offered their opinions about details and word substitutions. It all worked out so well.
One major revision we had to make to the original script was to choose the oppressive child labor victims; would it be the boy who worked in the coffee plantation or the girl who was a housekeeper, or both? We took a vote, three times, until all the students participated. The outcome: there would be one girl victim of child labor in their script. We modified the script from that angle eliminating the scenes that about the boy victim. We whittled the cast in the original script down from twelve to eight.
We went to the last of four readers’ theater workshops. I though I would give a seated six minutes reading of the “Child Labour” script because I couldn't act it out because of my operation, or even use my voice too strongly. It was to be recorded as a go-to for the troupe to practice. The contest is in four months. I thought I would try to give the troupe the gist of it and do final editing, but that's not what happened.
I didn’t give a “seated six minute reading” reading of the Child Labour script; I did it standing, a few times, and sitting another few times while cutting it down to six minutes, with a student time-keeper using a stopwatch.
I am satisfied with the outcome of the workshop and am confident that this script, with a proper presentation, will win the Readers’Theater contest in November. It may be one of the most important scripts ever presented in Taiwan’s otherwise abused English Readers Theater contest custom. The students have no idea of the depth of the problem of child labor, and in denial that it even occurs in Taiwan. However, I must say, students in Taiwan are more down to earth than the dumbed-down American students in the new teach-to-the-test system being promoted in the U.S.
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