Live Streaming School Shows: A New Kind of Parent Participation

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It makes sense and didn’t come as a surprise: parents aren’t allowed on campus to watch the holiday shows this year. I assume it will be the same for Lunar New Year performances. Even older year groups, such as WAB’s Dance and Drama performances, are live-streaming and not allowing anyone outside of the school’s students and staff to attend.

I know that many of us are grateful that our kids can have a performance at all. In so many of our home countries right now, families still need to balance their work schedules with virtual school or weigh the risk of sending their preschooler to a smaller classroom with how much they trust the other parents. Giving up the ability to be in the audience of a child’s live performance is a small sacrifice, but it is something to consider so we know how to make the best of it.

As I sat at my desk watching the WAB Dance shows on Thursday, I wondered how it would feel to be a teenager and know that I wouldn’t be greeted with flowers and a hug by my parents after such an accomplishment? How do my friends, who would normally have been as close to the front as they could to watch their little babies blossom into elegant dancers, feel at this moment knowing how hard they worked after school and in their bedrooms to get the moves just right, timing perfected, and also worked tightly as an ensemble?

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My husband and I experienced it ourselves yesterday. We’d spent a good bit of time explaining to our kids, especially our youngest, why we couldn’t be there. Our four-year-old didn’t quite understand what a live stream is, so we told them it’s like we have a private YouTube channel that’s just for the parents of their classmates, and that lit up their faces! We checked with them in the morning before the bus and they did seem to understand.

And so it was that on a day we would normally spend the morning as a couple, proud parents of a small child singing his little heart out to spread the “Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer” story around, waving at him from the audience against all our theater etiquette (for me at least), we watched separately from our respective desks at work. It was normal for us to have our WeChat conversations on the side, but a new kind of bonding happened that I wasn’t really expecting.

During the performances, the school’s parent WeChat groups lit up with praise. Instead of trying to whisper or give friends a thumbs up in the audience when their kid’s class was up, we could chat together. We assured each other when the live stream paused that it wasn’t just on their end, it was for everyone, and we took a moment to enjoy all the little cuteness that kids aged two to five singing and dancing completely out of sync but absolutely enjoying themselves could bring. Friends sent private messages to say how well each other’s kids did and share a bit of community joy for the bravery and resilience of these little creatures who’ve been through so much this last year and are able to end it singing bravely with their peers.

My husband shared the joy with his co-workers and I cried quietly into my headphones, wishing I could see their sweet and happy faces in person instead of through pixels, but so, so happy that we are all able to share the joy of song in our communities. It’s been a bear of a year, and if live streams are still how we must celebrate amidst precautions, then I think next time we’ll have a little viewing party, either in our homes or offices.

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Photos: Unsplash

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