Ding Ding! Round two

(A high pitched and scratchy announcer can be heard) And in this corner we have Damien. Damien took a pretty hard beating last night in the ring. Did he come back today still broken from the previous round, or did he bring with him the pain of last night to use as a new strategy for tonights game?!

No, to be honest, today was much easier to survive. Once the morning portion was done that is. We started off with two videos that could put even the cheeriest educators into a bout of depression. The first was a short film done in the 70s called Cipher in the Snow. Its about a boy who dies of a broken heart because nobody in his life showed him love. Its actually based on a true story which is the saddest part. Here it is in two parts on youtube.

The second video we watched is a little bit more known today. It's called Bang Bang You're Dead and it's titled after a play that was written in the wake of the Columbine tragedy. It portrays a troubled High School student who's self worth has been depleted by a group of jocks but finds himself through the help of a very concerned teacher. Here's, in my opinion, the most powerful scene.

The second part of the day took a 180degree turn as we focused primarily on motivation. We discussed one of our two projects which is going to be to produce a video or powerpoint that includes music and imagery, along with some sort of motivational speech tailored to our particular desired age group of students.

We also had another team building activity designed around mortification, I mean group participation. We were divided into 5 groups to enact our own version of the show "America's got talent" One group where the judges while four groups had to perform. We were all given an hour to come up with our talent. Correction, we were given an hour to come up with our take on the talent assigned to us. Our group was instructed to write a song and use instruments on friendship. Let me tell you, instructing 4 other people who've never played music in their lives how to play all the instruments we were assigned wasn't the easiest task, but I managed. Eventually we had finished out 60 second song and where ready for the judging.

We got the worst review from the judges, but if you ask me (go ahead, ask me) we were jilted. The other three groups had super easy tasks compared to ours. Two of them had to dance to a preselected song, which where "thank you for being a friend" and some Black Eyed Peas Song that sounded like nails on a chalkboard. One had to perform a skit of a joke that was provided by the professor. Talk about unfair! Oh well, I'm over it. I know who REALLY one that round.