We've lost a lot of men out there

Benn and I have decided that "we've lost alot of men out there" is going to be the unofficial moto for this semester. As it stands the music deparment is now four staff members short. Fortunatley that is only temporary as two will be back by the beginning of september, but it has also made all of our collective jobs here much more intense. I personally took 16 of stu's students, and almost sole responsibility for the wind ensemble when he left. On top of all this we have been planning a trip for the Wind Ensemble and Orchestra to bangalore for this coming weekend. basically whether I like it or not, I became the point man for the band in planning this trip. This has been a real crash course in the behind the scenes workings of a band program, specifically when planning events like a trip. I've had a significant role in writing the budget, Deciding whether a group of volleyball studetns shoud join us half way through the trip, and getting within a whisker of being embroiled in school politics. Fortunatley I escaped that one, but It wasnt easy. This on top of my 31 block a cylce schedule had meant that I've been regularily staying at school until 7 or 8 at night. Welcome to the world of band directing I guess. Unfortunatley all this activity has not left me with much energy to write in my blog, and for that I apologize. But that means this one should be really fun to read since I'll have so much stuff to sahre with you all.

Lets start with the weekend following the chennai trip, which I'm pretty sure I talked about. The weekend of the 15th was indian Independence. What a crazy time. It started saturday night with the Mother Mary festival. I think this is a celebration on St. Mary's feast day. It was wild. There were decorations everywhere, includuing these large light pictures on bambooo framwork. The one down the budge had to have been 100 ft tall, and that wasn't even the biggest one. This occasino epitomized India (or at least this part of India)better than any other that I can think. First, the prepearations seemed the be made quite haphazard. In one particular case, the Kodai club wanted top put un an awning over the street. The onl problem was that the street was in the way. What did they do you ask? Only what any sane person would do, send a team of men out with a hammer and chisle to chop through the street. From what i could tell they spent all night, and part of a day drilling four holes in through the asphalt to put up this awning for two days. Things are diffeent here.

The other thing that struck me was the crazy mix of cultures that was going on. Kodai was origionally founded as a mission, so it is not unusual to see chrisitan slogans written on cars, busses, lorrys, and buildings (In fact one of my friends likes to say of Kodai "you have to be high on jesus... or something to work at Kodai). The mother mary festrival was a direct extension of this very strong visual christian message. There were pictures of mary every where. The interesting part was the clear Indian style that these picutures and messages had taken on. Like I said in an earlier blog, India is loud, and this was no exception. Everything about it was very "in your face" The light displays were huge, bright, and in some cases have moving components. They also liked to contain seemingly unrelated imagry. One picture was of Mry with a Helicopter and a marching band of Bunnies below her. My friends and I couldn't help but chuckle at that.

All of this decoration (which you can see in the pictures I've posted on my photobucket) and noise (there was music blaring 24/7, gave the whole festival a really strong christmasy feeling. At one point I think I even heard christmas music playing as Icrossed seven road junction. probably because of this, one of the coolest exerpeinces I had that night was walking back from mungigal (the focal point of the march/festival) the call to prayer from a near by mosque went up. Such a cool mix of cultures and traditions.

As I said, this was a two part weekend. That next day, monday, we had off. Kind of. It was Indian Independence day, and in stu's absence, I was in charge of leading the band through the National Anthem and school song during the school wide assembly. Kind of a debut for me which was really fun. The music wasn't all that challenging, but it sure tested my ability to organize my band into a performance. I though it went off very well, except for clean up, which was like pulling the teeth of my students. That left me a little frusterated.

Beginning that Tuesday our St. Olaf observer arrived to observ all us teachers. She stayed for the week and ended up observing my four times (once with each band, one lesson, and my 10th grade music class). As nervous as I was for this week, it flew by, and she did a fantastic job of making it a stress free situation. Although she is not a music person, she did a great jkob of giving advice for the teaching side of my skills. Her biggest positive comment was my knowledge of my content area, and my enthusiasm for it. I think this especially showed through in my 10th grade music class where I'm teaching Sonata (one of my favorite boring subjects). Her biggest constructive comment was that I need to improve my awareness of the classroom and the students in it. She recommended changing the seating in my 10th grade music class (which I did today and it worked incredibly well) and being more aware of students in my bande, which sounds easy, but when you are a new teacher and you have 30 kids on your class, its easy to not make eye contact with everyone.

That brings us to this week. Honestly, apart from being incredibly busy all the time, Its all been pretty much the same. I have conversations with the orchestra almost daily to resolve a "big problem," I'm teaching more than i've ever taught before, and I'm learning all sorts of new things. My classes, as can be expected have been pretty up and down. 10th grade has been good for the most part, honestly the situation I'm in for that class is a teachers dream. 9 students who want to be in the class, in a classroom thats well equiped, I may never have that again in mteaching career. The reason it's been up and down has simply been because I've been experimentgin so much with how to run a class. Its probably more organized thatn any of these students have ever experienced before, but given the the incredible situation that this class in putting me in, i'm trying to make it as productive as it can be. My plan has been to take them through the four major musical forms of the classical period (Minuet and Trio, Sonata, Symphony, and Concerto) and culminate with them giving a presentation on one of these forms. Hopefully this will allow them to reveiw each form before a final test, and to practice good research and ctiation skills (which has been ahuige topic at kodai this year since three students failed the IB exam because of poor citations).

My bands have been a mixed bag as well. My biggest challenge has simply been keeping them focused and productive. Band it always at the end of the day, so they are usually tired and ready to do something else. Sometimes they are wonderful like last week when Kathy was observing me. My wind ensemble were angles, which was wonderful. Sometimes they are a realy challenge, like my Intermediate band when Kathy was observing. that band was reading a piece of music for the second time, and they were not doing it very successfully. Keeping them focused through that type of activity is quite challengeing. My saving grace though is that I'm still learning and I have wonderful advisors and metors around me to learn from. I'll get a hang of it eventually.

My final thing to add is that last week we had our Staff recital for the school. I opened the concert with Otto Ketting's "Intrada." I'm actually extremely proud of how it went, and managed to make a recording. I'm hoping I can post that here or somewhere else for you all to listen to.

Thats it for now. I need to go play some volleyball.

Cheers,

Kevin

Chennai

Ohh, I forgot to mentions that last weekend I went on a trip to Chennai with a small contignet of studetns and staff from the music dcepartment. All thew students and two staff, including myself, performed at a recital there. Its was really quite an experience and a real treat to finally get off the mountain. I took a few pictures and I'll post and catption them as soon as possible. 

India is loud

Yes I am still here. I apologize for the late update. Things have been pretty hectic around here for the past two weeks. Before I go into my brillinat insite for this entry, I'll guive a brief update about what has been going on with my teaching.

As a re-cap (mostly because I don't remember If I told you all this or not) my teaching falls in three areas; directing the band, teaching private lessons, and teaching a grdae 10 general music class.

To preface all this, it is important to mention that the music deaprtment here in Kodai is extremely short handed, now more so that the last time I updated. We are currently three hands short due to the no replacement for one staffer who left after the year, and two staffers who have left. One of those staffers will only be gone temporarily on personal business, which is a relief, but it still makes it hard on us for the time that they are gone.

Lets start with 10th grade music. I took this class from the first staffer to leave Kodai. So far it has been going extremely well. After finnishing some presentations, which the previous teacher assigned, I was finally able to take the class in a direction that I want. Due to a lack of explicit expectations, both for myself as well as for the studetns, I decided early on that the presentations would not be graded, but rather used as a wamr up of sorts for a larger project, which I assigned the next class period. The class is about the classical era, and basic music theory like circle of fifths, major/minor keys, chords and cadences, and classicl forms (minuet and trio, Soanta form, Symphony, Concerto Form). I chose to focus the project on forms because I think that this topic does the best job of bridging the gap between classical period msuic, and basic theorr. Also because, after spending a months studying sonata form in depth, I felt the most attracted and able to teach form.

Jump ahead to this week and we had our first lesson on form. I chose to teach minuet and trio because, in some repects, it is the simplest of the four forms offered. It also has a very clear link back to the baroque period, which I want the students to study in their projects. It also gave the easiest opportunity to teach line graphs, which I think the kids grasped to some extent. I surprised my students by giving them a homework assignment (a short bibliography assignment related to there projects, a reading about minuet and trio, and a line graph assignment). naturally they all cried and whined, saying the assignment was too long, but really the bibliography assiingment was only for they to find two sources and cite them properly (citation has been a big issue at Kodai this year), the reading was barley three pages, and the chart was far simpler than anything we did in class. My biggest concern is they simply don't do it. Benn, my host teacher, gave his class an essay, and no one turned it in. We'll just have to see what happens tomorrow.

Next is private lessons. I spend by far the most tiem during my day. The teacher who took a temporary leave was one of the primary lesson teachers and because of their absence, I will be teaching 21 students per cycle. Interestingly, the majority of these are clarinet players (9), mostly beginners (. My quasi-host teacher, stu, has said a number of times that beginning clarinet is the most difficult thing to teach simply because of all the squeaking. motivating the studetn beyond that point is quite difficult. For that reason is its been very good for me to take on these students. Its giving me lots of experience teachng an instruement I don't know very well (its not very difficult to out-play my on the clarinet right now), as well as giving me a reason to re-learn the instrument. In general all of these lessons have gone really well.

The final portion of my day is spent directing the bands. This has strangley been a mixed bag. I have loved my time with the intermediate band. They have been making wonderful progress, I seem to have all of there respect, and in general leading them has been alot of fun. My time with the wind ensemble has been a little more frusterating. I don't feel like I command their respect like I do with the intermediate band. They feel a little more incredulous of me (especially the percussion). With that being said, Wind ensemble is the one who needs my focus more. With the department so short handed, much more band responsibiliy has fallen to me. The band is playing at the Indian Independence day celebration at school on monday morning. I am leading the entire thing. Muscially its pretty simple, but its my first experience taking this much charge of a performance. I need to make sure the student are there on time, dressed, and wth their instruments and music. I need to make sure the proper percussion and other band equipment is their at the proper time and in the propoer place, and I need to make sure the band is musically ready to play the show. A bit of responsiobility there. I thnk I have my boxes checked, but we'll just have to see when monday comes.

The wind ensemble is also taking a trip to bangalore during the last week of august. Most of this trip has already been taken care of, so i'm not getting much responsibility for the logistic side of it (thank god, I'm not ready for that), But I am responsible for reparing my own piece for the conert there. The band will be playing a suite from the Hans Zimmer score to the movie Gladiator. It's been fun watching this piece develop with the band. I think today parts of it finally clicked for the ensemble. Really cxool to see. Hopefully we can have it performacne ready by the end of the week. Thats the deadline.

Ok, my insite for this entry: India is loud. I first heard this statement from Benn when I first arrived here. I found it interesting to think about this because, as Benn pointed out, it is true is every possible sense of the word. The smells, tastes, colors (oh my the colors), the sounds, and surprisingly the people are all very loud. One of the lasting images from this experience will be the India lorry. I LOVE the indian lorry. Its big, loud, pwoerful, disgusting in pretty much every way, looks like its held together with thumb tacks and chewing gum, and abover all is painted obnoxiously bright colors. Some even have multi-colored flashing lights in them. Even things that are supposed to be quite, like nice hikes int he woods, are anything but. Indian people, especially men, love to whistle when they are in high, or open places. perhaps its because they are not used to it. Im honsetly not sure. All I know is that the last time I hiked to a mountain top or majestic overlook, I was accompanied by at least 100 other people, and about ten of them were makeing very loud, high pitched whitles. Very obnoxious and has taken a while to get used to.

Well, I think thats abotu it. Hope this finds you all well.

Kevin