“Twinkle” is fun, but TACKLE is better
Another class has gone by without casualties, but there were certainly a few moments today when I had my doubts…. Everyone was back from the holidays and full of energy, so I thought that the prospects for a good class playing “Musical Cranium” were promising. Right and wrong. As usual. The game was a big hit for the first round, which lasted between half an hour and forty-five minutes. I should have stopped there – the boys had mostly been paying attention and, while they were not exactly learning from each other, they were engaged on their own turns, thinking about the questions and mostly getting them right. (Mental note: work more on teaching them about the instruments and instrument families of the orchestra. Begin to talk about the concept of a scale. (How?!)) In my dream-world, I had hoped they would listen to all the questions, learning from each successive turn…not the case, of course, because pushing all the chairs together, yelling at each other, and playing the electric guitar are all WAY more fun…. When I decided to go for Round Two, I began to dig my own grave, because shortly after starting the round, most of them began to lose interest, to play their own games, to throw the pieces at each other and nickname them (Cindy and Bob and I’ve already forgotten who else) and make up (loud) stories about them. I really need to work on the discipline thing. But how?!! Today I threatened that I wouldn’t give out any more candy if I had to tell them to be quiet one more time.
I told them to be quiet about one hundred more times, and no candy. This didn’t seem to have a tremendous effect, except that they all complained, moaned, and groaned about how it wasn’t fair that James got a piece of candy (he won the first round) and no one else did. I told them, “Tough luck, life’s not always fair.” I figured that it’s never too soon to begin learning that lesson. A few more minutes into Round Two and David announces that he doesn’t want to play any more, he’s tired of it and not feeling well, and can he take Andrew with him to go get a drink of water and plus he’s bored. Andrew then chimes in with his usual “Teacher, Teacher” (which generally precedes some kind of sarcastic comment or knock knock joke) but this time tells me “you, know I don’t even know your name. I just call you ‘Teacher.’ And I don’t really care.” Great, thanks for the ego boost. But it gets better, when at this point I give up the game to begin the violin lessons, and proudly whip out half a dozen worksheets and Escher designs for them to color or trace while I work with them individually. I spread them out happily on the table, longing for a bit of peace and semi-quiet so that I can teach. “You want us to do WHAT?!?!” demands Andrew. (“What?! What?! What?!” shouts David. David is always shouting.) “That’s totally lame. You’re lame. I don’t want to do that. I want to go home.” Shattered, I begin to wish vaguely that he would just go home, that they would all go home. I have no idea what to do with them, and I have run out of ideas of ways to get them to settle down, to care, to listen to me, to be quiet when I’m trying to teach. By this point in the class my head hurts from all the noise, I’m beginning to feel like the rest of the school must hate Mondays, and Ms S’s class of NOISE, and I want to go home, too.
Not so lucky! It’s time for the violin, regardless of what the rest of the kids are doing. And working with them individually is still, fortunately, quite wonderful – even rewarding. I love watching them concentrate; I am constantly amazed at how different each of their “natural” approaches is to the instrument. I marvel at how Terrence seems to think so hard about what he is doing, but then seems to have no memory for physical sensations – he’ll be playing, then stop to scratch a mosquito bite, and then put up his left hand again, but on the wrong side of the instrument. Sometimes I wonder if I told him to pick up the violin on his own, if he would remember which hand holds the instrument and which, the bow. So this is a good thing to think about, as I work on how to develop his physical memory. (The problem with this, of course, is that it requires a great deal of Patience, and of desire, on his part…a bit more difficult to come by.) While Terrence doesn’t quite remember right from left, Andrew naturally holds the violin spectacularly well, but seems to have a good bit of trouble understanding where the notes are on the violin. He remembers the strings with some thought, but despite our lessons on the notes of “musical alphabet,” despite all the spelling games and flashcards and things we spent the first month or so on (which seemed to teach the other boys almost effortlessly), he doesn’t seem to get it that “B” follows “A,” or that there is more than one “D” on the violin. Another challenge! How do I reinforce that? He has great ears, so would it be best to begin him with more ear training, to begin doing things aurally, and then transition into note-reading? Or would that just intensify the problem? As a teacher, I am beginning to love and look for these unique challenges that each student presents, because not only do they keep my life interesting (like I need anything else!), but also because on some level the boys recognize what they are not good at . . . and they want to get better! And THIS seems to be the best motivation, the best way to get them to pay attention and to work. So my task for the week, perhaps, is to find a way to incorporate that into the first hour of the lesson. It would be nice, after all, to keep up the “no casualties” record.