15 minutes of fame?

On Monday Fumiyo tells me that a television crew from the local news station will be coming to record an English lesson at the bilingual kindergarten on Tuesday and that she would like Melissa and Callan to come with me.  She also tells me there will be two mothers visiting with their children.  She wants to put on a good show for the reporters so she spends all day Monday quizzing the children on flash cards.

Tuesday Melissa, Callan and I go to the kindergarten.  There are eleven kids, including the two visitors, and five teachers.  Usually there are as many children with only two teachers, but today, for the guests and for the camera, we are all here.  Despite the additional help, one child manages to get lost briefly, another almost  sabotages the lesson by pulling all the tape out of the song cassette, another has a coughing fit—during recording—and throws up all over himself, another gets mad and goes catatonic for a few minutes—during recording—and another falls over in his chair—during recording. On top of that, We don’t have the flashcards that the students studied so hard yesterday.

Amidst all that however, I believe the cameraman got a few good shots of the kids singing, dancing, and doing what might appear, with the right editing, to look like they are learning English.