Thursday 7 February 2008

Me, music and teaching

When I was at primary school and my class was going to sing infront of the school my music teacher told me to mime as I was not a good enough singer. Then at grammar school I was always in the top half of the class in all subjects except music where I remained second from bottom. The bottom boy Stuart was a bit of a truant.

This was strange as I love music and tried to teach myself to play first banjo and then guitar as a teenager with some brio but little talent...

Well I carried on singing in the bath and then my daughter Emily got born and since it did not seem to matter to her whether I was in tune I sang her nursery rhymes and then Beatles songs, Pet Shop Boys songs, mostly at her bath time. She loves them and learnt them from me.

So when her primary school launched a family choir we had to be there. And the choir performs in public twice a year at the school fayres. I am still waiting for our choir mistress Carol to tell me to mime but she has not yet done so. I find that I belong in the bass part of the choir whcih is a suprise to me, I've been trying to sing too high for years. I love our monthly choir meeting it affects me deeply and makes me fel good, rather like good Yoga, cycling or a good religious service.

Emily has taken up piano lessons - making great progress - and last year she taught me to read music in a few minutes. I was staggered. Then a couple of weeks ago Emily taught me a simple tune again in a few minutes - me playing the piano! Emily does not know I can't sing, that I can't do music, am hopeless at it. She does not know I can't be taught!

So I am inching towards taking piano lessons myself. It wil take a bit of courage on my part to cross that line and present myself as a student.

Many of my students are mature, usually part-time and some come with some bad experiences. I often have to help them find their own voice in their writing and research and to value that. Their own voice gets knocked out of them usually by the time they've do their first degrees if not earlier.

I reckon I teach by loving them, if I can't find a way to love them then I don't take them on. This works best one-to-one or in small groups. When I have a large group (My uni loves it when I teach 30+ students!) to teach I try to figure a way of giving the best of me on that topic I have to teach, when I connect with my passion it ussually goes better. When I teach I feel I have only a limited amount of information to pass on, mostly I want to inspire people to trust what they already know, find their own voice and use it and write, find what they know they want to do and do it. OK it's not quite as simple as that but.....

I would especially welcome reactions to this post on or off line,

Thank you for reading me.

Bill

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