freestyle competition at FHCI ... my "review"

[mark tonin]

Yesterday evening the students in my Grade 11 Entrepreneurship class ran an event for the class ... a freestyle competition called Freestyle Mayhem. I just finished posting a message to my school's discussion forum and I thought some of you might enjoy reading it so I'm posting (most of) it here as well.

Here it is:

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mayhem (n.) - confusion and willful violence

Well, given the dictionary definition of mayhem, perhaps the name "Freestyle Mayhem" was appropriate for Friday night's freestyle competition.

There was no willful violence that I was aware of (other than the comments made by the competitors to each other during the competition), but confusion certainly marked the event.

I'm not exactly sure what happened. From what I could tell the event started reasonably well, and the battles at the start of the night seemed to be going fairly well. The sound wasn't perfect, but I could certainly hear most of what was being said, and some of it was actually pretty good I thought. My favourite line from the night went something like:

"When I'm done with you and the judge's tally

They're going to boo you like Bush at a peace rally"

Then, for some reason, things just started to melt down at the intermission. There wasn't supposed to be an intermission, but rather a half-time show, but a better name for it would have been a "dazed and confused nobody knows what's going on let's blame everything on the techies break."

We finally got some dancing happening (and the break dancers were awesome I thought), and a few more battles, and then the competitor from Cameron put on a bit of a show, but by then most everyone was going "wow, this is so disorganized!"

It's going to be an interesting class on Monday, that's for sure ... I'm sure the students in the class who organized the event learned a lot, and will most definitely realize just how much planning and organization goes into big stage productions and events. I'm going to focus on seeing the glass as half-full instead of half-empty and pull out the postives to the best of my ability. There were certainly lots of positives, including good attendance (approximately 300 paying customers), but I know some of the key organizers are going to have their heads hanging pretty low on Monday. And I certainly realize that in my quest to find the proper balance between teacher-directed learning and student-directed learning, I needed to give them more direction with the organization of this event. Live and learn ...

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Although the event ended up as a bit of a disaster, I still enjoyed parts of it and was glad I could help to provide a forum for young people who are into this sort of thing. I really know very little about freestyle rapping and was pretty impressed with the talent of some of the performers. And wow, the break dancers blew my mind ... it's been a while since I've seen people move their bodies so freely.

Peace, Mark

[\/\/illy]

... it's been a while since I've seen people move their bodies so freely.

What; no mirrors in your house Mark?

[mark tonin]

... it's been a while since I've seen people move their bodies so freely.

What; no mirrors in your house Mark?

Thanks for the giggle, my friend. See you next weekend ... can't wait! There may be a little body movement going on next weekend ...

Peace, Mark