After a month I’m feeling in a reflective mood about my time
here in Gurgaon. Although I’m teaching a lot and growing to know my students
more, I’m anxious for my stay here to have an impact that extends beyond the
time I am here for. To do this I need to train the teachers as well as teach
the children. However, this is difficult as in some of the areas there is
no-one else teaching besides me, so as yet, I can’t pass my knowledge on to a
successor. Nevertheless, there are vocal teachers I can train and I plan to
give a workshop to them shortly.
Otherwise, my classroom music lessons are going well at Shri
Ram were I have now covered the basics of rhythm, harmony and taught them about
different instruments. Last week I started a Blues project with my students
aged 11-14 and we have been looking at the historical and social background of
the genre as well as singing some blues. Some students are very keen to sing in
lessons whilst others are not so keen which can be a little disheartening.
Still, I had some great Elvis Presley impressions from the boys when we sung
his Rock’n’Roll version of the blues standard ‘Hound dog’.
This week I’ve been developing the Blues project in order to
teach about different technical features that make up the blues. I’ve been
encouraging an atmosphere of creativity which has been novel for my students
who are used to a certain style of learning where they regurgitate given
material. In today’s lesson for example I was asking pupils to write their own
blues lyrics based on the standard AAB form. Once the strangeness of composing
something of their own passed, I had some quite heartfelt responses- mostly about
how my students hate maths!
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