Teaching

Since I am here for teaching, I might as well give you guys a taste of what my week days have been like.

This week has been very strange. Not just from the point of view of starting teaching for the first time, but because the music department is in such an intense state of limbo, its difficult to do much of anything. The culprit for this state of limbo is scheduling. I have quickly discovered that scheduling is the number one difficulty at this school. Students schedules are constantly being changed due to class conflicts. Because of this the music department has been unable to schedule lessons for students, only half of the band members have showed up to each rehearsal, and it is not uncommon for a student not to come to one class because they have a conflict. That being said, my duties here will eventually be teaching private lessons, helping with all three bands (mostly the advanced and intermediate, but a little work with the beginning band), and helping teach a 9th grade music class.Because we haven't been able to schedule lessons, my time here has been relatively free. Eventually this will become the largest part of my day. One of my host teachers, Paul Jaikumar, Has already agreed to give me 6 of his students. I have already been working with one of these students, a talented Euphonium player who is working up an audition of the Royal School of Music exam (RSM).The other host teacher who I've been working with pretty closely, Stu Potter, has also talked about giving my some of his students, although we haven't figured out details yet. I am also planning on helping at the elementary/middle school one day a week, but who I teach and how many students I take has not been determined yet. It has been a little frustrating to go a week without doing what will eventually be the largest part of my day, but it has also been enlightening watching and helping my band directors get the band program moving.
The second largest part of my day will be working with the bands. All three of the band directors have been extremely generous in how much they will allow me to do with there bands. On the first day I met Mr. Potter he asked me how I thought I could best learn and contribute to the program. My response to him was that I wanted to become as much a part of the team as possible, which he has graciously helped me accomplish. On the first rehearsal we had with his advanced band, Mr. Potter gave me 1/3 of the rehearsal time to read through a piece. It should be noted that he is new here as well, so for his to surrender that much time for me was truly astounding. Mr. Jaikumar has treated me very much the same with his Intermediate band. He gave me two pieces to read through with the band, plus the opportunity to teach them part of a warm-up. In the end I think I was on the podium in front of that band for almost 45 minutes. What a treat.
I am also co-teaching a 9th grade music class. This has been quite an experience. There are only 5 students in the class, and all of varying backgrounds. One student cannot read music, while another understands the musical component quite will, but doesn't have very strong English. None have any extensive theory background, but all (at least I believe) have showed a strong urge to learn it. It will prove to be a very interesting, and I think very rewarding challenge.

That it for now, I really need to go have a weekend.

Take care,
Kevin