Skivjan Village Music Classes and Glee!
May 29, 2010
We had our first class in the village of Skivjan today. Over 100 children registered on Tuesday, but I think there were almost 200 in attendance today. It was really great.
While Jennifer and Camillo, our visiting UNT Psychology professors, did their assessment activity with the children who brought permission slips from their parents, Burim and two of the youth volunteers taught a singing class to the children who hadn’t brought permission slips. They sang “Gum Gooley Gooley”—a hilarious song about a man crossing the desert with a very irritated wife and a stubborn camel. The kids loved it, especially when they got to make the sound of the camel spitting.
After Jennifer and Camillo finished the assessment we brought all the children together to tell them more about the program and teach a final song. We had them all in one classroom and it reminded me of the classes I taught when I first came to Kosovo after the war. We had 5 children at every desk, and at least half the children were standing all around the room. It was crazy, and noisy, but fun. Burim did a great job and pretty soon they were all singing “Ram Sam Sam”, a song that has hand motions and gets faster and faster until the guitar can’t keep up and the kids are laughing hysterically. This is always one of the favorite songs—in Kosovo, Uganda, and N Ireland.
Tonight the youth volunteers came over and I showed them some episodes of “Glee”. They loved it. We might try to do a few songs in this style with the Youth Volunteers this summer—it would be so much fun!