08 - The music teacher challenge

I got so caught up in the recent happenings that I forgot to mention that I started teaching a class in music as well. Fifteen teenagers now struggle to understand my very, very different way of explaining and teaching music, and of course my still half-fluent Spanish. It truly is a challenge, especially when all I have is four lessons more.

The first lesson though must've been one of the most successful ones so far for me. Although I must say I was explaining it in a pretty weird manner; since I didn't really know how to explain the difference between the refrain and the verse of modern music, and even less in Spanish, I played songs for them and once explained by jumping up and down to show them the feeling of the energy you "unleash" at the refrain. Yes, it does sound quite insane, but I think it worked; shortly after I got them competing in groups who could guess the most parts of songs I played. Unfortunately though I only have the music I brought from home, and they had to cope with listening to System of a Down, Stone Sour, KorN and Rise Against. But they really liked it when I let them warm up with the song "Bounce", jumping up and down during the refrain and doing some sort of Ska-dance during the verse, the last two lessons. So I guess it's not too bad.

Besides this though, I feel pretty sad about the quality of the musical education here. They have a teacher who, although nice, lacks any musical experience at all, and all they do (or so I've heard) is work with this book which I think it utterly useless. It is like trying to teach about Mozart without hearing his music. I mean, what's the point? In music, without practical experience, it lacks any real usefulness. I guess that's why I tend to be a little insane during the lessons; I get the feeling they need to see the emotion of the music instead of just the talking!

So, we'll see how good I'll manage with that next week. Haven't got too much time left for teaching, so I guess it'll be pretty hard. But I'll try my best!