End of Year Play

I never said anything about the Littles’ End of Year Play. Life got too hectic for the next week, but it was the most impressive performance that I have seen from a school, yet.

The singing and dancing cobbler, and the soldiers -- Zenon at far right.

Staged in the Museum at Kouklia – a Lusignan Period manor house – the play was a fairy tale involving a Princess, some soldiers – including one that became an unwitting suitor and one (Zenon) who chased a live chicken across the market square, several priests, a singing and dancing cobbler, and assorted villagers. The stage was large, the choreography complex, but the students and teachers carried the whole event off with style.

Waving the sixth-graders off to Gymnasium (Junior high school).

There were even weepy moments when local dignitaries presented the sixth grade students with their diplomas and the students filed away through the lamplight to the waves of their former colleagues.

A sea-change seems to be happening in Cypriot schools – at least the smaller elementary schools – as I’ve heard some other good comments from other parents with children in village schools. Teachers and administrators have been discovering that creativity and diversity, far from being a threat, can be an asset.

The bigger concrete education jungles in towns see increasing vandalism, violence, and nascent gang problems. Maybe the powers that be in Nicosia will realise the merit in downsizing, and instead of building more soul-less boxes devoid of greenery where thousands of children are ‘educated’ together, will clean up and restore to use some of the beautiful old neo-colonial schools in the villages and smaller towns – a possibly more complex undertaking than tendering the building of big schools to old buddies in the construction business, but one that in the long run, I truly believe, would pay big dividends.

Hope springs eternal!