Orientation Blog

     So, one of the more major events for leadership had just come and gone by, and now it's our turn to talk about what happened there. Orientation is a little event put on during school by leadership that is used to get elementary students who visit Ilima for this specific purpose to get more familiar with shifting from elementary to middle school (Ilima Specifically). However, in order to add a spark to the presentation, you're forced to dance to a choreography composed by one of the students. A few select students are given a certain role to contribute into the orientation, and a few examples can include a presenter, slide maker, choreographer, etc. Presenters use slides as they read out instructions or information regarding Ilima, and those slides are conducted by the "slide makers." And choreographers are just choreographers, as we choose a song based on whatever movie or theme the orientation is on; the choreographers make a dance regarding the song. If you don't know how an orientation works or plays out, it's usually simple. First the students arrive at the campus and all the leadership kids come to greet them and guide them to their respective seats. Once this is finished, said leadership people are then instructed into their locker rooms to change into their own costumes and come out to present themselves once they're finished by sitting in the very front row. Shortly after, a few presenters come out to welcome the students and present a few topics regarding how Ilima functions as a school/community. After a few presentations and slides, the campus tour began. The name itself already says enough but, the campus tour is a relatively short and was a vanilla tour around the whole school. Mainly to keep it to be bland and simple just so people are more interested and anticipated for Ilima (Or to just keep the tour short, I don't really know.) Following that begins the talent show, the talent show demonstrates the dress code using the dances that have been choreographed by some students. This is how we manage to get the student's attentions because most of them don't really have an attention span. The leadership students are assigned a specific piece of clothing to use during this fashion show and overtime throughout the song, the presenter announces the person's name and what clothing they have on. The clothing used wasn't to set specific, it just mainly covered the more popular pieces of clothing that are used. This is how they were able to share the dress code easily by making it interesting and worth the time to set up and do. Some fashion show items weren't only clothing but accessories as well like phones and such. Finally, when fashion show ended after all the songs have been played through, the orientation was concluded with a final presenter stating important dates and questions asked by the students.

Dancing to the Original Version of the Boys Choreograph

    I don't actually have strong feelings regarding the orientation, it had a sort of steady flow to it and wasn't too stressful but there certainly were some points that made me have second thoughts on orientation. A few highs that i've had regarding this event was choreographing one of the dances. In case you didn't know, I was one of the choreographers and I had to make a dance to the song "Livin' La Vida Loca." I've done choreographing in the past for a talent show so this really wasn't a problem for me, but I've experienced issues from the people who had to dance to the song. I had to make the boys choreography and they couldn't really handle things that were too extreme or fast, so I had to improvise into a dance that was more subtle. I'm disappointed in didn't turn out the way I imaged it, but I'm not complaining since it still turned out decent. A few lows about this orientation were the students, a lot of them weren't bad but some kind of just disturbed the whole process of the orientation. We had this one kid during the tour who wouldn't stop talking and insulting others and it was unpleasant. Besides that, majority of the students weren't as bad as I thought. Another low could have been how hot it was, I know it's something you can't control but I was dying in my costume and out of it. Those changing rooms are an actual heater because there's no way.

Picture w/ Holomua

    I haven't really learned many lessons from this whole experience, but I do think that I'm developing one because of orientation. Thanks to orientation, I've become what is a better self-directed learner. Because of orientation I was able to teach myself how to instruct others and how to take full responsibility of something extremely important (ex: the dance.) I learned how to be more responsible and harder worker, including having to teach and instruct the dance for others.

Teaching Others the Boys Choreography

    Overall, I have no exact opinions on orientation, it was fun I can't deny that at all of course. But on the other hand; it was extremely stressful for a lot of people. I liked orientation though, comprising the dance was fun and making the costume was enjoyable at the least. I really wish we could've had some sort of play or acting though, it would add more life to the whole orientation deal. Overall, orientation was fun, and I enjoyed it, would I do it again, probably not unless it had more of a spark to it.

In Costume (Rumpelstiltskin) 

    As I said before, one of the main GLO's I had used was becoming a self-directed learner (GLO 1) mainly due to the fact that I had to take a responsibility as a choreographer and stick to that by taking my time to conduct and teach everyone the choreograph. With this, I was able to teach myself leadership skills and how to be more responsible as a person in general. Regarding GLO 2 (Community Contributor) I helped by doing my part of the orientation and making one of the dances, I was able to give to my community, or group. And could successfully work together with other people to conduct the orientation into what it became. Another GLO (GLO 3) which was a complex thinker was used as well. Overtime I had developed issues with teaching the other guys how to do the boys choreography and I didn't really just give up. I took the time to slowly introduce and expose them to the dance and was able to think of a way out of the issue that we had. In fact, we also had to slim down the choreography a bit to make it simpler instead of just forcing them to follow some harsh dance. With complex thinking, we were able to understand how to do the dance accordingly and in sync. The 4th GLO (Quality Producer) was making the dance. I know I'm mentioning choreographing a lot for most of the GLO's, but that's mainly because it my opinion, choreographing and teaching it was difficult but proved a lot about the effort put into it. The dance had time thought into it, I did my best to make a simple dance people could follow that also followed the song and hyped up the audience a little. I'm glad about what I made and would say that it took well thought-out effort. The 2nd to the last GLO (Effective Communicator) was actually used a lot throughout the orientation, it's how we learned how to do things and how we got help from others while helping others out as well. I was able to ask for feedback and suggestions about the choreograph from the people who had to dance to it with me and their ideas helped the dance to make it easier and better for everybody else. And finally, GLO #6 (Effective and Ethical User of Technology), this sort of links to effective communicator but thanks to the technology today, people could easily practice dances, ask questions, etc. Because of the app used, we were able to easily demonstrate and practice our dances which included mine, so practicing was extremely. simple.

Normal Picture (Janzen you Look Like You're on the Verge of Tears)

    Mr. Ing, please make the next orientation based off of The Greatest Showman, I'm so desperate for that film to become noticed for once PLEASE.