Ventures in Vashi from a Becky who now can hear!

The school bus home has turned into a daily music session as the children ask us to sing, sing along to songs they know, perform their own songs to us and even take small ukulele classes! I have even been honoured to hear the debut of a new song which one of the girls had written specially for me!

Outside of school I have started teaching a girl from church piano. For a few years she has been working pieces out by ear with impressive results! Her dream is to be a pianist and she practices very hard. She also wants to write a song for her parents’ wedding anniversary which I am helping her with – adorable!

Working with the younger children in school is teaching me to be more dramatic and communicate through whole body gestures. It is amazing to see the difference in their response if you who them magic beans that are only jazz hands compared to magic beans that are jazz hands plus a footstep!

On Saturday Cat and I will start working with a choir from the Sacred Heart School who have asked if we can come and run a few rehearsals. We are really excited about this!

Teaching was very difficult since last Friday because I lost most of the hearing in one of my ears. It is very odd teaching music without full hearing! The school nurse saw me a few times and eventually sent me to hospital which terrified me! I needn’t have been worried – the service was excellent and with no waiting around at all I was sent to an ENT specialist who got to work and now I can hear. Hooray!

The keyboard in our room of the apartment is getting lots of use as the Indian girls we are staying with are learning little bits and pieces and are teaching us a beautiful hindi love song which I’m working out an accompaniment for. It is such fun! They are also teaching us some classical Indian dance which is amazing! 

Weekend in Trivandrum

This weekend we went down to Trivandrum at 4:30am on Friday morning (to beat the traffic!) to be there to teach at the other school Abraham works at, a.k.a CDMS. It made a nice change to be exclusively teaching piano to children rather than teaching classroom lessons to people our own age! The school that we went to offered piano, keyboard, guitar and drum lessons which all went on all day in the small building so it got quite noisy as the day went on... There is also no kind of structures timetabling in the centre and students just turn up at any point in the day so we just had to be there on stand-by on the off chance people would show up! (which they did!)

The method of teaching here, like Nadia said, is completely focused on graded exams and because of this, the students are taught the bare minimum they need to pass it, i.e just learning the pieces and scales they need to play in the exam and not expanding their other skills such as sight-reading. This made teaching them a little difficult to get used to as many of them were not very good at actually reading the music. I think as the weekend went on though, we found ways of getting around this and it did become a little easier to get things across to them. We tried making tactful suggestions about how the students should perhaps engage in short weekly sight-reading classes with fun music like pop or Disney so maybe that could be the future? Some of the students returned the next having practiced with our methods, making huge improvements which was really rewarding.

As well as continuing our work at ACCM, we are also becoming more integrated with the children's home we are living at. For example, the weekend before last we organised a little concert where the children could put their name's down and do a performance in front of everyone. It was great fun and they really seemed to enjoy all the singing and dancing that happened so this weekend we're planning on doing something similar again but this time, making more of a competition out of it!

We had some exciting news over the weekend as well. We're going to be on Indian television!! Abraham is involved in a local Christian worship program and has been asked to record a show that we will be involved in, in a couple of weeks time which will be super exciting!! 

More updates coming soon!!

Rebecca

Gurgaon: The Saga Continues

Áine here again.

Drawing to the end of the first month in Gurgaon, and this week has brought about a lot of change and discussion at One World College of Music.

In the weeks here so far, it has become apparent that there have been a couple of issues with the organisation of some of the lessons in the school, as well as attendance of the pupils. The former issue mainly centres around the fact that a lot of the group classes are of mixed ability, and therefore cannot be taught efficiently by the teachers. This has led to teachers and pupils sometimes feeling a little bit unfulfilled, when classes have to be catered to a large range of needs. Classes are also sometimes ambiguously named and teachers do not always know exactly what they are meant to be teaching.

In this week’s teacher meetings, however, I and the teachers worked on a plan for the timetable to rectify some of these problems, and presented these to the director of the school earlier today. The director took the suggestions very seriously, and off the back of this meeting there is now a more coherent timetable, split into instrumental, theory/aural training and group practical lessons. The guitar teacher has volunteered, and has now been appointed, as a student-teacher liaison manager whose role is to ensure that pupils are put into different classes on the basis of standard and commitment, following an initial assessment. He will also be in charge of leading the twice-weekly teacher meetings and helping sort any related issues. In addition to this appointment, many of the books that teachers have been asking for have now been bought or ordered, the storage of books has been reorganised, as well as enquiries started into sourcing a box of earplugs for the drum room.

The final point is one of my inputs. I have a hearing impairment myself, and as a result have to wear two hearing aids, and experience a number of related problems in the world of music. I am therefore very sensitive to the fact that many musicians suffer from degradation of hearing from constant exposure to noise, and am very aware of how hard any hearing impairment can make life. Obviously exposure to noise is a danger in music classes, especially for percussionists. I would therefore encourage anyone working at a school with drum and/or percussion pupils to discuss the acquisition of ear plugs (the foam ones are often very cheap when bought in bulk) and possible measures to reduce exposure to noise. Education about this problem, though, is key. I have so far found that this is an issue discussed in India even less than back on home turf, but is perhaps even more serious here, as help for those with hearing loss appears to be much less common and much more expensive than in the UK. 

Anyway, here endeth that lesson.

The long and short of this week then, has basically been progress. I am always very aware that I'm over here in India not merely as a supply teacher, but to make some sort of lasting impression and to work for cultural dialogue. It is therefore very encouraging that everyone at all levels of One World College of Music are keen to collaborate in order to work to improve the school in any way, and use the full extent of any outside knowledge of music education that I may have. A brilliant and productive week - the future definitely is looking even brighter for One World!

Maria - Gurgaon Post 3

I’m quite exhausted from this week! Since my last post, rehearsals for ‘Oliver’ have been properly organised and put into action. This is much better as it means that the classroom music lessons at the Shri Ram secondary school are not divided between rehearsing for the musical and learning the basics of music theory. It also means all of the singers are together in one room instead of rehearsed separately in batches. We’ve established quite a full-on schedule of 3 rehearsals per week for these 13 and 14 year olds. Yesterday the Shri Ram students came to the private music school IMD to use the facilities so I worked with the choir whilst other teachers helped the piano and guitar students. The excitement of being taken to the music school made the children eager to learn and this enthusiasm reflected in their music making.

I’m keen to establish a choir at both IMD and Shri Ram because at present there is no ensemble music-making in either school. At Shri Ram this would help to embed music into the school as a fun activity and provide an outlet for so many of the students who are keen to sing in music lessons. It would work in counterpoint to the music lessons themselves which I am reluctant to let become solely singing classes especially because there is so much else to cover! Although we do use singing in the classroom lessons, having a choir would be a positive environment for singers who are keen to take part. At IMD, I’d like to set up a choir because a lot of the students who take singing lessons have difficulty in sight singing. Mostly, this is because they are learning from lyric sheets instead of music and have music theory as a separate element to the class. I’m trying to change this as I think that learning notation and should be incorporated into the singing. Still, in establishing a choir the singers will need to read quickly and have fun doing so as a group.

I’m doing very little piano teaching but am getting stuck into composition teaching which is mostly on a one-on-one basis. This week I’ve been teaching how to compose a melody using chords I,IV and V. Most of the students have a good basic knowledge of theory but are used to arranging rather than writing their own music so this has been quite new to them. Next week I’m going to be looking at how to create structure in composition.

My thought for this week has been inspired by one of my students at Shri Ram who was misbehaving and not doing his work in a class I was teaching about musical instruments of the orchestra. When I asked the little boy why he wasn’t working, he said this was because he didn’t see the point in studying this because he was never going to see an orchestra or play in one. Although my reply to my student was that this didn’t matter because it is still important to learn about different instruments so he can appreciate them when he hears them in films and grow up to be more inquiring, I thought he did have a point in questioning the cultural relevance of western classical music in Indian culture. Instruments other than piano, guitar and drums are rarely taught in Gurgaon/Delhi as there is no demand for them. Similarly there are no orchestral concerts here: the majority of concerts are fusion bands, Hindi pop or Indian classical. Rather than teaching exclusively western instruments such as piano, guitar I’ve been thinking that IMD should have staff who specialise Indian classical instruments so that the children can learn music born from their own culture. Still, since western pop is so ubiquitous here it is fruitful to expose them to western classical too, albeit as a complement to Indian classical music, not a substitute.

Avalon Updates - Cat

It's fast approaching the time when the children we've been working with at Avalon are to showcase their work to their parents on the open day.

We've managed to turn the bear hunt in to a theatrical performance with the teachers/aunties getting involved by playing some percussion and marching through the performance with various drum beats. There's even talk of filming it! That as well as 'Drop in the Ocean' and a bit of 'Singin' in the Rain' (how fitting) should make a nice presentation for the Senior Kindergarten. Junior Kindergarten have yet to tire of 'Oats and Beans' and they're doing a similar theatrical rhythmic march as Sr KG through the jungle, something I wrote myself. That and another plant themed song will form their presentation and it's all coming together. We have one more week of rehearsals before the performance.

Rain has affected our teaching this week. Some of the children in the schools live quite far away so on Tuesday and Wednesday this week, we had a half day as the school had to shut; a firm reminder of the dangers of the monsoon. This meant that we lost a couple of teaching hours but it's nothing we can't bounce back from!

Becky working hard - Jack and the Beanstalk presentation

I've spoken to the teacher in charge of the pre primary and kindergarten children about reshuffling our hours so we can branch out a bit when the presentations are out the way. This is being arranged so that Becky and I can spend some time in a less privileged school in Mumbai and do some workshops there. Ayush is putting us in touch with the relevant people. (My phone literally just rang as I'm typing this!) We'd also like to get involved with the day care after school programme at Avalon. They are a mixed bunch (aged 3-13) so we could do some more advanced songs and exercises with them and encourage the older children to act as peer mentors to the younger ones.

On 31st July there is a fundraiser concert happening in Mumbai that Ayush will give me the details for. I'll take some snaps and hopefully post them up here for ya'll to see. 

Teaching in Musee Musical

After being in Chennai for 3 weeks, I’m having a better understanding about South India, the food, the culture, the people are amazing. Even though there are not too many places that you can visit and not many things are happening around here, but it has been awesome so far with musee musical and seeing India in such a different perspective.

My school is based on individual learning and it is always taught on a one to one basis. The level of students varies but the majority lies between initial grade and grade 5.  In the school, it is very common for the teachers to be teaching 2 or 3 children in different rooms at the same time. This way, children often only get about 20 minutes lesson and around 40 minutes of practice. I find every day challenging as I can always go to different students at different time and check upon their progress and not one day is ever the same. Going to a room where the student is practising alone help both the teachers and students as I will listen, give opinions, evaluate, and share my practising methods in order for them to know how they can practise efficiently at home.

It has been very rewarding by sharing my musical knowledge and teaching experiences with the teachers too. Some of them are working towards ATCL and we have been discussing about my past experiences, sharing opinions and forming new ideas on advance piano playing. This not only helps the teachers to progress but it also allows the teachers to pass on this information to each other as well as to their students.

At the moment, I’m working on a duet piece, a Slavonic Dance by Dvorak with one of the teachers in here, and I shall upload the video in here soon.  I’m trying to help them understanding the benefits of playing duet pieces and how they can impose this onto the lessons with the students. And I can see how this is helping the teachers and students to learn, so thank you Nadia for introducing this in the Induction session!

The Paul Harris workshop was held in our school. It was great in terms of the new idea that the teachers can be used during their lessons and advices that will help the students to work on their sight reading techniques.

Some students have just finished their piano particle exams during last week and I have been trying to reinforcing the importance of sight-reading to all of them, and start off with some simple pieces that they can be able to play. Telling them different techniques that they can apply into their practice such as understanding the sense of rhythm, try not to look at your hands whilst playing, try not to stop or repeat the same phrases again, etc.

However, there is often a cultural issue and parents would like to push their child for grades and playing pieces that are too hard for them. It’s frustrating sometimes that they only play pieces that are on the grading syllabus and nothing more, so I’m also trying to introduce pieces that both students and teachers have never heard of before such as Bach Inventions. Also, seeing the students with a grade 6 book in next lesson just after doing grade 5 last week is fairly common too!

For these coming weeks, I’m planning to work on a short booklet that will provide some additional suggestions onto their daily teaching by going through most of the common problems that I have seen students have in here, from pedalling to hand postures, etc. Apart from this, I’m also helping the school to prepare pieces and songs that the students and teachers will be performing on their annual day in September!

Throwing stars and l'homme arme

Becky here from Avalon school in Vashi, Navi Mumbai.

I’ve just had a very excited class of second-grade students finishing their musical performance of the princess and the pea then enjoying the bongalow! They have also written lyrics for two songs based on simple tunes, choosing to write about manners and conserving water. All of my four second-grade classes can now clap notated rhythms and seem to enjoy composing their own on the board for their friends to clap! Each class is writing its own lyrics on different tunes and I have copied their lyrics to Scarborough Fair at the bottom of this post for you to enjoy – they have beautiful ideas! One class have been really enjoying the l’homme arme tune so I played them part of a mass by Josquin based on this idea. They then showed me what the music made them think of - more beautiful ideas!  

My grade one classes are preparing presentation of Jack and the Beanstalk to show their parent using instruments, a learnt songs and a song which they wrote themselves. There are some particularly good giants in these classes!

All of the classes are enthusiastic about the ukulele and the flute, often requesting particular tunes which they have heard me play before. A really nice end-of-class activity is getting them to show me with their actions what different tunes on the flute make them think of.

I am about to tuck into a lovely Indian lunch. Enjoy the children’s lyrics below!

Class 2D are journeying,

Through the clouds with the birds,

Through the thunder and the tornado,

Woo, Crash, Woo, Crash,

Class 2D fly through the clouds,

Clouds like cotton and mountains

Climb up the rainbow and slide down,

Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet.

Class 2D plays with the stars,

Throwing stars and jumping between them,

Landing on a rock on the moon.

Class 2D rocks.

We fly high behind the sun,

Feel its warmth and sparkle.

The sun shines on our faces,

Class 2D shines like the sun.