Teachers - part 2

So, here we go with the first great teacher in my life.


Mrs Killock


I don’t know what happened to the music teacher that came before Mrs Killock in junior school but I do know she was quite an old lady and one day she was no longer there. She taught us all the old classic songs that still seem obligatory to learn as a child even now – ‘Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious’, ‘Doh, a Deer’ and some African jingle in words no one understands just to be ‘culturally appropriate’ so on. She was, in many ways, the worst kind of music teacher because the kids loved her and loved singing the songs and so never realised that we had learned nothing. We enjoyed it because it was an easy lesson – but we learned that music was not a subject to be taken seriously. I see many music teachers doing the same today despite the fact the in the UK we have a national curriculum to prevent this. The children have no idea that they are learning nothing because they are always singing new songs and think this constitutes learning – it doesn’t, it’s just called practice. I don’t want to belittle singing – rightly, it is there in the curriculum too because of the importance it has. I don’t want any singing teacher to think I dismiss it’s value. But oddly, I think such singing lessons have killed off choirs in the UK. Why?


Well, we should have learned from history. Specifically, the mistake the UK made over recorders.


The Plague of Recorders


After the Second World War there was a shortage of metal and, as a result, of instruments in the UK. A need for cheap instruments meant that the recorder (a simple, cheap instrument made from wood) became the school instrument of choice. Millions of children learned to play it extremely badly and most hated it after the initial fun of honking a few notes through it. The rest, who had potential talent, tended to think of it as a ‘child’s’ instrument and moved on to more ‘adult’ instruments like the flute or clarinet as they reached high school. The result was that the recorder, as a serious instrument with hundreds of years of tradition behind it has all but died. In nearly 20 years of teaching I have only ever met one student who took it as a serious instrument and had reached grade 8 by the time she finished her GCSEs. In making use of this instrument’s good points we killed it off. Hunted it to near extinction, if you like.


Singing in schools is having the same affect. Many kids hate it or, at least only tolerate it for the ‘free ride’ it offers for a handful of minutes. Those that like it usually only do because they see the lesson as a chance to ‘get out of doing any real work’. As a result, few go on to more serious choirs at high school age and very few ever think of joining a choir as adults. Once, in the UK, every town boasted a choir. Now, only a few do and most of those are struggling.


Well, Mrs Killock was totally different.


She got us on recorders admittedly (but the previous one had not even done that) and actually tried complicated arrangements with us. She did still get us singing which is fine I guess especially as the songs were more serious and less ‘childlike’. Actually, she varied the lessons really well in this respect long before ‘variety of pace’ was a buzzword amongst teachers. But it is not for these reasons I remember her.


Ludwig Von Beethoven


One day she started teaching us about Beethoven. She taught us about his life and played us recordings of his music. She taught us about his three periods of work and why each was different. And she expected us to learn and remember. There was to be a quiz.


I was hooked. I had never known about musical history before. I had never realised that composers had a story and led fascinating lives. Suddenly the music made sense instead of being boring. I understood that ‘fate was knocking on the door’ in the 5th symphony because Beethoven was going deaf, I understood why the 3rd was ‘heroic’ because originally it had been dedicated to Beethoven’s hero Napoleon. I was fascinated by the twist in the tale that Beethoven had scribbled out the dedication afterwards when Bonaparte had declared himself emperor and became a traitorous villain in Ludwig’s mind. I got a chance to glimpse into the soul of a tortured man for the first time.


I worked liked crazy for that quiz and when it came I answered the questions confidently. When she gave the results back and I was top of the class, both she and I were surprised (I had never shown any ability in class before let alone interest in music - I didn’t think I had any interest myself). This was something I could do. I could learn, I could read, I could understand. I had always thought music was just something you could either ‘do’ or ‘not do’. Now I knew I could, at least, learn to appreciate it if nothing else.


And that one event was enough to keep me interested during three pretty dreadful years that followed at high school (a story for another time involving unrequited love, death and betrayal) until I decided that I really wanted to learn music properly.


Variety is the spice of life


As a teacher I look back and realised that Mrs Killock was the first music teacher to give us variety of task. Instead of spending 40 minutes singing a small selection of songs a couple of times each week, we sang, played, learned to read music a little, learned history. We dipped our toes in the water of musical learning. I’m sure some hated the history, but loved the singing. I was the other way around. The point was that there was something for everyone.


I’ve learned in my own teaching that you can never please everyone all the time. I used to think that kids only wanted to learn about pop and rock music but soon found that when I actually taught modules on this more arguments broke out amongst the kids than with anything else. If I played rock then half the class would complain loudly. If I played pop then the other half would complain instead. Oddly, if I played classical and made it interesting – told them the story behind the music as Mrs Killock had done – then I never got complaints at all. They could see the point even if this was not the kind of music they normally chose to listen to.


Take up a hobby today


So, these days, I give variety where possible and I try to put variety in my own life too. I recommend it to anyone really. Life is too short to focus on only one thing or become so obsessed with work you have no room for anything else. I’ve just taken up Japanese for that reason despite being overloaded with learning Bangla and a few other useful languages. I’m doing it just for fun, for a few minutes each day with a Japanese friend giving me a little help once a week. No pressure, no tedious hours spent on it, just something new.


If you haven’t already done so, I warmly recommend you take up a hobby. Not to be good at it, just to do something a little different in your life. 10 minutes a day doing something new. It has become recognised in the Business world as well as many other places that some kind of activity that is purely for enjoyment is good for you and makes you are better employee. More importantly, if it involves physical as well as mental activity then there are many health benefits for you too. Sport, painting, juggling – anything really. You could even take up an instrument.


But maybe not the recorder. Please.

Teachers – Part 1

As I continue on my quest to find the perfect teaching method (and failing, I might add) I have spent many years pondering over which teachers in my own life I considered influential and why. I have known for some time that different teachers were special to me for different reasons but it is not a bad idea to reflect over just why they were special. Sometimes, it was the circumstances that made them special, a case of being the ‘right person at the right time’. Other times, they were just an amazing teacher and influenced many as a result.

As the expression goes “One man’s meat is another man’s poison” so it is probably true that some I will list were probably hated by others. Again though, there were a few who just seemed to be universally loved by all they taught. I would love to have been one of those kind of teachers and still aspire to get there one day. I am proud that over the years I have won over the hearts of some tough kids who found other teachers unpalatable but I know there were some I never reached and am sure I saw pure hatred in their eyes sometimes. Those children I feel I failed.

Still, you never know. I was recently very surprised and please when one young man I taught many years ago got in touch with me through Facebook. At school he had been a terror and I regularly had to tell him off or even give him detentions. He did not do well at school and was eventually expelled. But in chatting with him on Facebook he had clearly changed. He knew he had been a bit of an idiot at school and regretted it. He also had nothing but praise for my teaching and the times we spent together and was quite apologetic for his behaviour.

That really touched my heart and gives me hope that the few who got away and whom I just could not get through to maybe, at least, don’t hate me.

That’s my worst fear. That there may be young men and women around today who look back and think ‘eugh, Mr FP? He was horrible. He made my life miserable.’ If there are some like that and they happen to be reading this, then I hope they will forgive me.

But, I think it is always best to look at what has been positive in your life rather than focus on the bad and with this in mind over the next few blogs I will list my own top few best teachers ever. Maybe it will inspire you to think about your own choices. Feel free to comment about them here and add in to the discussion. You will notice that often I give criticism of teaching or teachers in general but this is not to knock my fellow teachers. Instead it is to give the background to why these chosen ones of mine were special and maybe give a context for yourself and your own teachers about why they were good or bad. My aim here is to show my favourite ones up in a good light and explain just what it is about them that I hope I have tried to pick up in my own life.

I will look at each teacher in chronological order and consider them as follows:

• As they meant to me as a student
• As they mean to me now as a teacher
• What I have learned about people as a result of their input in my life

I hope you find this, at least, interesting and maybe useful. If you grew up with me you may know some of these people and might like to comment about them yourself. If you are a student or ex-student of mine you might be interested in a different perspective on teachers. If you are neither of these you will, I hope, be interested in my thoughts on life stemming from these experiences. Feel free to comment on any of these things and I will endeavour to make sure your comment gets posted quickly.

New Year's Resolutions

 Well, the party is over. Christmas is complete and New year has been celebrated. 2011 has begun and who knows what it will offer?

This is probably going to be my last full year here in Bangladesh – at least for a while. We’re well over the half way point and so now we are beginning the ‘countdowns’ – last full year, last academic year, last birthdays and so on, ticking them off as they go by.

It means that I am doing a lot of contemplating about life, the future and so on but at the same time trying not to let what I have now slip past whilst I ponder deep and meaningfuls. I really have taken on board what I wrote before Christmas about appreciating what is around me, what has been given to me and who I have been blessed with. We don’t know who is going to be taken from us at any time but at LAMB we have a kind of ticking clock telling us that these wonderful people will be taken away very soon. So what can I focus on this year to make best use of my time?

Normally I don’t bother with resolutions as, like most of us, I fail to keep them, but maybe I can just think of them as targets to aim for without punishing myself if I fail a few. I’ll share my thoughts with you and maybe you can hold me accountable. Anyway, here goes:

1)      To reduce the number of times I fail my family. Without wallowing in self-pity or suggesting I beat my wife and kids or anything, I am very aware that I let them down a lot. I fail to notice when V. needs me to listen or be there for her and I fail to realise to that my son and daughter are easily belittled by me when I tell them off for not tidying their rooms, doing the homework properly, washing correctly, doing enough music practise or just breathing incorrectly. I am still working out how to discipline them so they grow up knowing boundaries without crushing their character. Maybe this year I can get it right a little more.

2)      To reduce the number of times I fail my students. Again, mostly, I am not bad as a teacher but I am still looking for that Eureka moment when I finally work out the method for teaching that gets it completely right. I have moments of brilliance but, alas, many more moments of mediocrity. How can I inspire my students and push them to reach new heights of understanding whilst not crushing their creativity or stifling their need to be young and free. How can I be both friend and teacher and get the balance of both correct?

3)      To understand the Bangladeshi culture and language better. Despite hours and hours every week of studying, I feel my language is still the worst out of any bideshi who works here at LAMB. Yet, others seem to have done their study long ago and don’t do much or any now but have a much better understanding than I do. I get frustrated that there is so much language yet to be learned and so little time. As for the culture – gosh I’ve hardly begun! I am very aware that I have so little understanding of how Bangladesh works. I feel I owe it to my friends here to grasp the culture much more so that I can avoid stepping on toes and causing offence. About the only thing I have learned from my Bangladeshi friends here is that most of the bideshis who think they know the culture well have often got it hopelessly wrong. It does not bode well for me with even less understanding, I must say.

4)      To get published in magazines. In this early stage of learning to be a writer I’ve cracked the blog and the newspapers but next is to get some articles and maybe some short stories in magazines. I would really love to get one or two of the books I have been working on out too but considering it has taken me thirty years of playing with writing to get around to completing enough to get published in anything at all, I have no idea whether something as grand as a book could get finished! Still, it’s an aim. Don’t hold me too accountable for this one…

5)      To build better relationships between Bangladesh and the West. Ultimately, that’s what I have always been seeking even before coming here and is, in part, what has motivated me to write at all. To try and stop people in my own country and elsewhere just throwing money at ‘the problem’ and feeling they have ‘done their part’ by donating to charity. Instead, I want people to see that there is a very real world outside their own and that they can do something very real to change a part of it. I am under no illusions that our time in Bangladesh will make any real significant difference to the country. But we have made a difference in the lives of a few here and, along with many, many others here  - bideshi and Bangladeshi – collectively that builds up into this wonderful place that LAMB is. On our own it is nothing, but together, in relationship, it is everything. If people back home can just grasp this and have a desire not to ‘do their bit’ so much as to ‘get involved’ then much greater change can happen throughout the world.

Well then, that’s the list. I have no idea whether any of it is achievable or even if I should begin to try. But, it should be interesting to find out.