High School Music

It is getting towards a month since I took over my three high school music classes.  Since each class only happens once a week (although each one is a double period), that doesn’t actually mean I’ve seen as much of the kids as one would expect.  However, it has been long enough for me to see that the boys – both 1st and 2nd form – are easier to handle than my one group of 2nd form girls.  The girls are whiny and lazy, not to mention the fact that they chatter.  All. The. Time.  No matter what I do.  I split up pairs and groups, but they just find other people to talk to.  They also have no problem talking across each other.  There is only so much space in one classroom with which to buffer chatter.

The boys can certainly be rambunctious.  The 1st form boys especially like to talk, and also spend a fair amount of time wandering around the classroom at will.  “Sit down!  Be quiet!  Sit, sit, sit, sit, sit!”  “Miss, we aren’t dogs!”  “Well, if you act like dogs…”

But they can also be fun, and their antics seem to come so much more from wholesome high spirits than unengaged…bad attitude…that I am more willing to take them on.  It is also easier to be direct with the boys.

Anyway, yesterday’s 2nd form boys class (also the smallest high school group, at about 11 or 12 students) was probably the best music class I’ve had yet.  Even the normally unengaged boys were mostly interested.  One of the boys, who usually sits by the window and listlessly strums a makeshift guitar while saying nothing, surprisingly sat in the middle of the classroom, right in front of me, and participated with a will.  We learned piano keys, practiced drawing treble and bass clef signs, and worked on “Nearer, My God, to Thee,” a hymn I had started teaching them a week or two earlier.  I also had them listen to fancy version of the song with 9 cellos, which you can hear here.  They had told me originally that the song sounded like “funeral music,” so I thought they needed a bit of help seeing how exciting it can be.

 

I was rewarded at the end by this exchange with one of the boys, who is admittedly a sweetheart anyway: “Miss, are we going to sing this song?”  “Yes…?”  “I mean…on Monday?”  “Yes, we’re learning it.”  “Miss, it seems interesting.  It seems like an interesting song.”  Stamp of approval!

 

One of the quiet, but engaged and apparently artistic 1st form boys reversed that little ego boost this morning by telling me before the 1st form class that “this class is very boring to me, miss.  We don’t sing any music that we know.”  (I understood this as “fun music.”)  To add insult to injury – if I were really prone to receive either from teenaged boys – “Miss, they say a lot of things in Spanish that are very disrespectful to you.  I’m sorry for that.”  “Well, do you say disrespectful things?”  “Miss, have you ever heard me talk in your class?”  Fair enough.  He stays pretty quiet unless I call on him.

 

Sigh.  I was not surprised by this little relay of information.  I am also inclined to believe it, coming from this student.  C’est la vie.  I am in the process of deciding how to simplify “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” for the boys to learn as a more fun song.  This was suggested by a 2nd form boy, but I liked the suggestion, so I started to do some research.  It technically comes in six parts.  That is so far beyond our reach that I think I will boil it down to two.  In any case, I think both 1st and 2nd form boys can work on it.

 

In 40 minutes, I must wade into the slithering mass of whining and jabbering that is my 2nd form girls’ class.  I don’t think it helps that I teach this already difficult bunch for a double period at the very end of the school day.  I have been mulling for days over what form of hardcore discipline to employ today.  I need to make an impression, to get them under control.  I don’t like the idea of giving demerits in music class, since it is only an elective, but I may have to do so.  They can smell weakness, I think.  I will at least have to use demerits as a threat to back up some other form of discipline.

 

Junior college classes are a different kettle of fish, but I will save that for another day.  My parting salutation to you all, (2nd form girls being foremost in my thoughts) is: Ave, Caesar (et. al), morituri te salutamus.  Yes, I realize the number is wrong, but it’s a quote.