End of Year Finales

What are Finales?

During my time working as an After-School A-plus program leader at Pearl City Elementary school, we would do yearly projects with our specified group of students called “finales”. These finales consisted of students performing in front of an audience, all of which were parents, staff, or other students. The purpose of the finales was to help students focus on arts and creativity and the performances usually consisted of either singing or dancing. It also helps students to build coordination skills, teamwork skills, and to overall just have fun. My role in these finales as a group leader was to help coordinate these finales, teaching the students how to dance and building the confidence to perform in front of others.

Challenges and how I Overcame them

Naturally, coordinating these finales and working with groups of twenty-five children was no easy task, and there were quite a few obstacles that I had to overcome. One obstacle that proved to be one of the most difficult every year was choosing a song that everyone would agree to dance too. I learned that when working with a large group of children, there are bound to be disagreements and even defiance from the children when they do not agree with the chosen song. In these situations, I had to learn the ability to make teaching and trying new things fun for children so that they would enjoy participating. Another obstacle I faced was children going home before the practice times every day. With these situations, I had to develop good structuring skills so that I could provide practice times before the majority of children started to go home. Of course, with this I needed to also find a good balance of doing other necessities, such as homework as well. If I knew certain students weren’t doing so well academically, I would make sure they focus on their homework first before being able to participate in the practices. If students still happened to leave early, I would request that if they had time, for the students to practice at home or with other classmates so that they would be able to keep up with the progress of the other students.

Skills and Experience Gained

Coordinating these finales helped improve my leadership skills, as well as the ability to work well with people of all ages. It also helped improve my ability to teach others, since most of the time the students would need some help in learning dance moves. Not only did I need to help coordinate the choreography of the dances, but I would also coordinate with the rest of the A-plus staff with tasks such as where the groups would sit, the order in which the groups will perform, and to set up a presentable environment that would help to engage the audience in the performances. In the end, the performances always turned out great, and the parents, students, and staff always enjoyed them.