Our open house last night was wonderful! Our students were amazing ambassadors for our school and really did an excellent job with their presentations.

I was discussing it with one of my teachers that did the bulk of the work supporting our students and we reflected on the presentation. My comments were that it was the the worst show we’ve done with respect to the technical side and the best show we’ve done with respect to the messaging.

The technical issues included long(ish) transitions/set up between parts of the show, a live feed failure (beyond our control), a microphone feedback pop right in the middle of a performance, as well as a few mic level issues. The thing is, these weren’t awful, they just weren’t up to our usual high standard.

When speaker Alvin Law came to our school a few years ago at the end of the show he said to me, “What kind of a school is this?” I was a bit confused by the question and he said, “I present all over the place, to big companies with massive budgets, and I’ve never had a sound crew so professional and have the sound work so well as with your kids today.”

I tell sound/tech crews that their job is to be invisible. When a microphone is too quiet, they get noticed, if a microphone pops with feedback or if there is a delay in setup, they get noticed. A good team isn’t noticed because everything works. Last night the tech issues were not awful, they just weren’t perfect. No one in the audience would point it out as disappointing, they would all recognize that this was a student run show and there were a few minor kinks.

That’s the thing about truly letting the students lead, it’s not always going to be perfect, but there is a positive vibe that is given off when students get to run the show, and ‘perfect’ is usually a less than realistic goal.

The overall presentation was really solid, in fact I think the messaging was very focused around student voice and you could hear that throughout the show. It’s funny because I can think back a few years to a show where everything went exactly as planned and the show was pretty much perfect. When I told my teacher that I thought this show was even better than the messaging of that ‘perfect’ show, he agreed and said, that show was too slick. It was polished but student voice didn’t come through.

We’ve gotten pretty good at letting students really lead. We’ve worked with perfectionists who stress about every assignment they hand in and taught them how some things need to be good enough, and helped them rethink the definition of done, while other things they do they should really make as perfect as can be.

While a big presentation to over 160 people should be as perfect as can be, when you are letting students run a show and the students who do so change every year, things won’t go perfectly every time. But the job is done. The presentation is over, and what we saw were some awesome kids, doing their best, and putting on a great show that really showed that they take pride and ownership in our school.

Last night was imperfectly great. The show was not as tight and seamless as we’ve had in the past, but it was authentically a student production. It had student voice, and I thought the messaging was the best we’ve ever shared as a school. Our students were awesome!

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Here’s a short video clip from the event.