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In which Rivka is overcommitted at church.
Today was the first rehearsal for this year's Christmas pageant. We're doing The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, which was originally a book by Barbara Robinson. The story is about a family of horrible awful juvenile delinquent kids who muscle in on a church Christmas pageant, take over all the roles, and wind up Teaching Everyone A Lesson About Christmas. Yeah, I know. But it's going to be fun. The kids are really excited.
This year we're going with simplicity. Most of the exposition comes from a narrator, a teenage boy who will be reading from the script. A teenage girl plays the mother who gets roped into directing the pageant, and she also has a fair number of lines. The younger kids (who play the rest of the roles) have just a manageable few lines each.
The thing that's really ideal about this story, at least from my standpoint as the director, is that the play-within-a-play aspect means that I don't have to worry about the little kids learning where to go and what to do. If they need to be herded around the stage by adults or they wander off or whisper to each other? It'll just pass as realism. And I do have reasonably sharp kids in the key child roles.
Against my better judgment, I gave Alex a speaking part. She really, really, really wanted to be Gladys Herdman, the youngest delinquent kid, who winds up with the part of the Angel of the Lord in the pageant. She has one line, which she delivers at two different points: "Hey! Unto you a child is born!" Hopefully she will manage it all right. I painted a vivid verbal picture of how she'll have to deliver her line in a church full of people she doesn't know, and she insisted that she could. Cross your fingers for us.
Also, as if that weren't enough, I am gearing up to teach OWL again. OWL is the UU comprehensive sex education curriculum. It's a 27-session course aimed at grades 7-9, or about ages 12-14, and covering everything from the mechanics of the reproductive system to equal rights for GLBT people to dating and relationships to what people do when they have sex. It's intense, and fun, and draining, and awesome.
Neither of my two previous co-teachers are repeating. Instead I'll be teaching with my friend Laura and with Michael. Michael! Will be teaching OWL! Which means that we are going to need childcare for OWL every week, unfortunately. But Michael was the only likely male volunteer, and you can't have OWL with only female teachers. And Michael will be great.
We have parent orientation this coming week (twice - once Tuesday evening, and once Saturday morning) and then we start with the kids on January 5. Whew.
This year we're going with simplicity. Most of the exposition comes from a narrator, a teenage boy who will be reading from the script. A teenage girl plays the mother who gets roped into directing the pageant, and she also has a fair number of lines. The younger kids (who play the rest of the roles) have just a manageable few lines each.
The thing that's really ideal about this story, at least from my standpoint as the director, is that the play-within-a-play aspect means that I don't have to worry about the little kids learning where to go and what to do. If they need to be herded around the stage by adults or they wander off or whisper to each other? It'll just pass as realism. And I do have reasonably sharp kids in the key child roles.
Against my better judgment, I gave Alex a speaking part. She really, really, really wanted to be Gladys Herdman, the youngest delinquent kid, who winds up with the part of the Angel of the Lord in the pageant. She has one line, which she delivers at two different points: "Hey! Unto you a child is born!" Hopefully she will manage it all right. I painted a vivid verbal picture of how she'll have to deliver her line in a church full of people she doesn't know, and she insisted that she could. Cross your fingers for us.
Also, as if that weren't enough, I am gearing up to teach OWL again. OWL is the UU comprehensive sex education curriculum. It's a 27-session course aimed at grades 7-9, or about ages 12-14, and covering everything from the mechanics of the reproductive system to equal rights for GLBT people to dating and relationships to what people do when they have sex. It's intense, and fun, and draining, and awesome.
Neither of my two previous co-teachers are repeating. Instead I'll be teaching with my friend Laura and with Michael. Michael! Will be teaching OWL! Which means that we are going to need childcare for OWL every week, unfortunately. But Michael was the only likely male volunteer, and you can't have OWL with only female teachers. And Michael will be great.
We have parent orientation this coming week (twice - once Tuesday evening, and once Saturday morning) and then we start with the kids on January 5. Whew.
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And what a marvelous choice for a Christmas program. I love that story.
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2. Given how hard it is for your church to rustle up volunteers willing to teach the sex ed class, you'd think they could rustle up someone willing to babysit for two adorable little kids while those kids' parents teach the sex ed class.
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