I brought the XBox to school for the last day of the grade four camp and we spent a period on Rock Band. Unfortunately I only have the guitar, but I also only had four students and one little grade one kid we had to babysit for reasons that were unclear to me, so no one got too bored. I showed them all the basics, what the buttons do, how to strum, when to hit the notes, how to hold the guitar, and they insisted pretty much from the start that they knew how everything worked and to just let them play. Well, they were sort of right; they did have an uncanny ability to navigate menus, even menus in English, without being directly instructed and in spite of never having played the game before.

I put them on "Eye of the Tiger" to start with since it's an easy song, contains no swear words and is a little more accessible than many of the songs on my playlist. After the first boy I suggested they change songs, but they were quite happy with the "Tiger song" and wanted to stick with it... again... and again... and again. One child would play guitar while the others chanted, "DUH! Duh duh duh! Duh duh duh! Duh duh DUH!!!" I've had that stupid song stuck in my head ever since.

Unfortunately, while the boys responded eagerly to the challenge, the girls reacted mainly with fear; I only coaxed them into playing once and that time they agreed that one girl would strum while the other hit the buttons.









My co-teacher was REALLY into it and asked the borrow the XBox overnight to play. She's one of the most disorganized Koreans I've ever met, so I was quite reluctant and asked her about a dozen times to "please be careful". I felt a lot like a mom whose child was on a sleepover with that kid whose parents are a lot more permissible than me, and I kept wanting to call and ask if my baby was okay and if he wasn't sick or anything. Thankfully all went well and everything was returned in seemingly good condition.