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Event's Growth Causes Stir

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Photo by Linna Jones

Helping Out - Sophomore Della Knight (standing) helps high school students in the festival's craft room while the students waited for their competition time.

   Local area high schools participated in the seventh annual Southeast Arkansas Foreign Language Alliance Reaching Educators and Students (aka SEARK F.L.A.R.E.S.). The event was a competition of language skills, skit production and musical talent.

   Samantha Winn, a 10th grade competitor in the event, enjoyed the event.

   “It was a great learning experience. It also helped me meet a lot of different people,” she said.

   SEARK F.L.A.R.E.S., while enjoyable to high school students, also held some charm for the workers involved. Della Knight said she happily helped craft over 100 flowers. Knight lent her support to the event by volunteering her time to one of the three activity rooms.

   The other two activity rooms contained bingo and ethnic dance lessons, which students participated in while tabulators (also student volunteers) began the first phase of adding scores.

   The scores, taken from four skills categories, were further broken down by Spanish and French languages. Judges tabulated four categories of performance -- poetry, public speaking, extemporaneous speaking and vocabulary -- to find the winners.

Photo by Linna Jones

Working - Junior Lauren Truelove works at folder table.

   As the performance phase of the presentation geared up, a couple of UAM student workers said this part of the event holds a special place in their hearts. The performance segment of F.L.A.R.E.S. held three important cultural backgrounds.

   In “Una Mosca,” students from Star City gave an act based on the vowels of the alphabet. Star City high school students created a fly costume for one of their performers. In the skit, five other students chase the fly character around with giant paper and wood fly swatters, each with a vowel on the prop.

   “Una Mosca” began a revealing of a positive change for the festival, although some may argue. Director Isabel Bacon said care should be taken when calculating the value of “Una Mosca’s” accidental loss of music. She said the dual problems of music cutting out on Star City, and the accidental loss of score sheets should be viewed warily.

   “It is a sign that this festival is catching on. We had so many high schools participating this year that we were very rushed on our transitions,” Bacon said.

   Even with a huge amount of students workers (whom Bacon said she believes should be thanked for getting out of bed on Saturday), F.L.A.R.E.S. simply had too much content to be held with no problems at all.

    “I do not mind staying until midnight, but we were rushed because the kids simply could not be held for that much time,” Bacon said.

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