MOUNT VERNON — Special entertainment brought “Oohs,” “Ahs,” and loud applause from the students at Mount Vernon Middle School on Friday afternoon.
Dragon Show Culture & Arts Exchange visited the school, performing physical feats of balancing objects in undesirable positions. Two assemblies were held so all students had the opportunity to experience this cultural phenomena. Students and teachers were amazed by the group of four that artistically performed.
“Whenever we look at assemblies and those types of things for students, we look at the educational aspect, or how it also exposes them to the arts,” said Bill White, Mount Vernon Middle School principal.
With the Olympics held in China this past summer, there has been a lot of excitement and interest in Chinese culture.
“This allows us to bring it into the schools, and also [let them] see something that they will remember from the Olympics and China,” he said.
As technology increases, access to information about other cultures becomes more available to students, expanding their knowledge of the world around them.
“The goal is to make the world a smaller place for these students because it is certainly smaller for them than us when we grew up,” said White. “They may physically never get to go any where, but they can go all around the world just using the technology at hand.
“It is nice to have them see something that is not just on the screen, something that is real,” he said. “It is a win for the kids. How many times will they get to see, in person, Chinese contortionists and people talking about their homeland?”
The school often tries to incorporate cultural educational activities into the students’ learning experience.
“The teachers try in different ways in their classrooms, whether it be having a guest speaker come in or having someone come in and do a PowerPoint show of their travel,” White said.
he performance was a matter of timing, White explained, as the performers were holding a show in Plain City and were looking for another school in the area in which to hold another performance.
Many of the teachers anticipated the performance, and White said he received a lot of positive feedback from the faculty. Earlier, teachers were sent an e-mail telling them of the assembly schedule for Friday.
“Every single response I got back was really excited. They were like ‘This would be wonderful,’ ‘This would fit with my unit,’ or ‘This would fit with what we studied.’ There was not one person who said ‘I would rather not do this,” he said.
According to White, the school doesn’t often have an opportunity to hold special assemblies like this one.
“So this will be something new and exciting that we haven’t done in a while,” he said, adding that he hopes it will open the door for future cultural opportunities for the students.
