Thingies that happen to Steve in his other job

[SteveHopwood]

I was teaching a boy yesterday who has not been long in this country, an immigrant from Eastern Europe - Romania, I think. His English is pretty good but is still at the stage where he can misunderstand what is said to him.

He played to me. "Terrific," I enthused. A highly dubious young man enquired, "Was it that bad?" I boggled at him blankly for a few seconds then the light dawned. 'Terrible' and 'Terrific' both begin with the same sound and he was misinterpreting the word. You should have seen his face when I corrected his misunderstanding.

This reminds me of an incident years ago. 'Stupendous' is one of my adjectives. I was describing a little girl's playing as 'stupendous'. Mum was sitting in on the lessons. We were both confused because Little Girl was doing really well and getting rave reviews during her lesson, then bursting into floods of tears the moment she got into the car to drive home.

The reason emerged after about three weeks of this. A sobbing teensy bit of humanity managed to say, "He thinks I am stupid." The poor little thing had heard the term 'stupid' but was unfamiliar with the term 'stupendous'. Glad we got that one sorted out.

[SteveHopwood]

Here is an incident that happened in school this afternoon. It is not funny. Instead it shows the best of teen behaviour. We all know what horrors they can be at their worst. We all know what an unutterable joy they can be at their best. This is a tale of one at her best. Enjoy.


The school music teacher had a horrible accident and broke her hip a couple of weekends ago. She has had the requisite surgery and will recover fully, but not for a while; she is unlikely to be back before the start of the new academic year in September.

The school has brought in a temporary replacement, a gentleman I met this afternoon. Temporary replacements can be subjected to a beast of a time by teens who know that said TR will only be around for a while.

Not at this school. The kids at the school are the loveliest I have met in a long career. TR told me that he has enjoyed a lovely reception. It probably helps that the entire ethos of the school is built on creating an atmosphere of calm respect. I am in my third year at the school and have yet to hear anything worse than unyielding insistence from any member of staff dealing with a recalcitrant teen.

Even so, 14 year old Nikki surpassed herself today. To back track a little, TR was in my teaching room when I arrived, so we had already met. I was teaching 13 year old Maddy when he wandered into the room a bit later on. I introduced them with, "This is Maddy. A young lady of infinite charm and intelligence whom I adore. She does have this habit of parking her brains at the door when coming for a piano lesson, but nobody is perfect."

TR grinned at Maddy and replied, "You and most other children. Hi Maddy. Lovely to meet you." He didn't just win over Maddy at that moment.

Back to Nikki. TR wandered in again, so I asked him how he was getting on. It was a brief conversation, but Nikki worked out whom he is. Nikki is one of his year 10 GCSE music students. She called out, "Excuse me. Are you the teacher who has come in to fill in for Mrs Shepherd?" I intervened with, "This is Nikki. She is one of the greatest kids you will ever meed. She is one of your year 10 music students."

Now comes the really, really great bit. Nikki is 14 remember. 'Ordinary' kid. Not used to 'meet and greet' stuff. She stood up, approached TR, held out her had for a shake and said, "It is lovely to meet you. Thank you for coming to teach me."

Wow. At the same age, I would have been picking my nose and grunting, "Uh? Whut?"

You can imagine the effect on TR.

After TR left I said to Nikki, "That was a lovely thing you just did. You are a star." We moved on after that. Nikki already knows my high esteem of her from before, but a bit of teen positive self-image reinforcement never goes astray.

[SteveHopwood]

The music rooms at at school are large and the front of the class is a long way from the door. Also, the door is masked from the front of the room by a short partition. This means there is no direct line of sight between the front of the room which the teacher customarily occupies, and the space immediately outside the room.

The whole ethos of the school is aimed at keeping volatile teens calm. The approach to the kids is kind, understanding and sympathetic, yet unyieldingly insistent. It works brilliantly. The place has a wonderful atmosphere.

The system broke down magnificently a couple of days ago. The music teacher has been involved in an accident that will keep her off school until September and the new academic year here in the UK. The school have found an excellent temporary replacement; he is not yet fully up to speed with how the school works.

One of the thingies the school insists upon is: students must line up outside a room before a class. They can enter only at the invitation of the teacher and must do so in a calm and orderly fashion. Staff are compelled to insist on this and will be disciplined for falling short of requirements. Start a lesson calmly and there is a chance of continuing as such, etc

I have escaped the Shame of the Black Hole of Calcutta and now teach in one of the huge rooms along the same corridor as the music room in question. I had a victim fail to turn up and decided to go for a walk.

I left my room and was greeted by the year 11 (rising 16) GCSE music group, a conscientious group of kids not given to hanging around in corridors 15 minutes after a class before a rapidly looming important exam is looming. I have got to know them during my time at the school.

"Ehup guys" I intoned. "What are you doing?"

"Waiting for our teacher to turn up" replied one of them.

I assured them that he was in the building because I had seen him, and was sure he would turn up soon. I wandered up the corridor and turned into a more main area.

My single firing synapse leaped into life and suggested the possibility that inexperience of the school ethos and geography might be leading to a misunderstanding, so I wandered back to the group and said, "Hang on a second."

I entered the music room to be greeted by the sight of the replacement music teacher and one student in the group working closely together. "Sorry to interrupt" I said, "but do you realise you have an entire class waiting for you outside?"

"I was wondering where they had gone" he replied. Pure class. Teacher inside wondering where class had gone. Class outside wondering where teacher was. Teacher was not used to the concept of orderly entry into a room. Class was not used to the concept of disorderly entry into a room.

Oops.

[SteveHopwood]

13 year old Maddy got me. She is coming along nicely in the teasing game, is Maddy. 13 year olds often do as they head hot-foot towards 14. I deliberately explained something inconsequential to her in a way that no normal child could possibly understand. "Got it?" I asked?

"Nope. Didn't understand a word."

I adopted a stern face and intoned equally sternly, "What you really meant to say Maddy was: 'Yes sir. Of course I understand sir. That was the clearest explanation of anything I have heard all year, sir'."

Brief pause. Big grin. "Nope. Didn't understand a word."

I detect a certain lack of awe and trembling in my presence.

[SteveHopwood]

15 year old Kryzstian accosted me in the corridor when I arrived in school this afternoon. A highly worried looking K.

I wish you could all meet this boy. You have guessed from the spelling of his name that he is from Eastern Europe - Rumania. He moved to England two years ago with his family. His English is far from perfect. It is still far, far, far better than that of a spoiled English brat 'yobbo' whose every second word is, "F**k". Brits all over this forum are nodding their understanding of the breed.

Time and again I look at this young man and try to imagine being 13, leaving your home culture behind and being dumped in a totally foreign one. I try to imagine it. I bet I fail to grasp anything remotely resembling reality every time.

K is impeccably polite. His manners make me feel uncouth. I gave him a really hard time in a lesson a few weeks ago. Not shouty or anything like that - I do not do shouty in piano lessons. Just implacable in my insistence that his lamentable preparation for his lesson was not left uncorrected. K did not have a pleasant time.

At the end of the lesson he thanked me for the lesson and apologised for being so badly prepared.

That is the kind of heart-meltingly wonderful child he is.

So, to return to my being accosted by this highly worried looking child. "Can I have a word with you please, Sir?" I do not think I will ever get used to being a, "Sir". I am a "Steve" not a "Sir" but that is my problem.

"Of course. Come in and talk to me about it."

"I have a problem," K announced.

"Only one? Lucky lad," I replied. "Am I it, or merely the biggest of a number of them."

K ignored all that. Probably best to. He gulped, took a deep breath, gulped again and intoned gravely, "I have lost the copy of the piece you leant me."

Now, however harsh you think child discipline should be (mind, if you think it should be harsh then I recommend you stay quiet here) I am not entirely sure that losing a piece of music would rate as a capital crime in your view. Especially as the piece in question was one I downloaded for him from ISMLP i.e. the Petrucci library. Check it out fellow muzos if you have not found it yet.

I considered a wind up, but K really did look nervous. Instead I said, "Not to worry. I will bring a copy for your lesson on Thursday. I assume all this means that you cannot play it because you could not learn it because you lost it?" Nod of the head.

Just bear in mind now the exchange that ended our lesson a couple of weeks ago. K informed me that he had a, "Really bad joke for me." He told it to me. He was not lying. It was horrendous.

So, when I assured K that it would be OK and I would simply pretend that he was meeting the piece for the first time, he looked as relieved as it is possible to be.

Not understanding the term, "Quit when you are ahead" (how many 15 year olds do?) he stated, "I have another really bad joke for you." I pointed to the door and roared, "Go." He grinned at me and fled.

Wonderful creatures, teens.

[SteveHopwood]

It was graded music exam time in our area last week. It brought its usual collection of wonders.

On a visit to one school last week to rehearse for the exams, I had a session booked with Ben, second on the list. I had finished with the child before him and had gone through to chat to Becky, a staff member I am especially fond of through a prior association with her baby sister, and returned to find Ben waiting for me.

"Ehup Ben" I said.

"Ehup Sir" he returned.

I have never got used to being a, "Sir" but that is another story.

I had a moment of doubt about halfway through our rehearsal. I have a terrible memory for names. I am capable of looking at an 18 year old I have been teaching for 10 years and temporarily forgetting her name. Someone I do not know well? Forget it.

So I said to Ben. "Ben, you really are Ben, aren't you?"

"No. I am Carl," came the impassive reply. This was our second rehearsal and Ben/Carl had barely uttered a word throughout either of them. A little shy, I guessed. Ready smile. Ready laugh. Just nothing to say.

"Sorry." <Pause for thought. followed by explanation of my name memory difficulties> "Tell you what. Agree with me that your name is in fact Ben and you get an extra therapy at the end of our session."

"OK".

------------------

Come the day of the exams and Ben and I were in the warm up room. We played his pieces, then suddenly he started talking. It was awe-inspiring. I swear he did not draw breath for five minutes. He must have circular breathing mastered. Maybe it was a self-defence mechanism in case I renamed him again.

He is an utterly adorable 12 year old; cute as they come at that age.

---------------

Katie is 15. She could easily win Miss Personality of the Year. I am fairly sure she featured earlier in these pages, as the young lady who forgot to remove the cleaning rod from her flute and thought she had broken it.

We warmed up. The steward came to get Katie who asked to go to the waiting room to get her water bottle. Off she popped and I could not resist. "You do realise that she does not actually possess a water bottle and that she is going to the shop for one?" I said. You should have seen her face until I told her I was only kidding.

Mind, a minute passed with steward and I waiting in the approach to the exam room. "I will go and get her" I announced and popped out to the waiting room. To find Katie in the middle of the room happily holding forth to Emily, her best friend whose exam had preceded hers, and associated rapturous onlooking parties. Katie in full flow is a sight to behold. "Any time this afternoon would be good, sweetheart," I intoned gently.

"Mum just had to go to the car to get it," replied K. Which, of course, was parked up the road and around the corner. We did get to the exam, eventually.

------------

These exams are intended to help amateur musicians judge their progress. OK, so the upper grades can help with university entrance for all sorts of reasons: they show the ability to work alone and to a deadline; they require that students be able to motivate themselves outside of the school curriculum; they develop problem solving skills. I could go on for a long time, but you get my drift?

The arrival of the exam date is an odd thingy. For months, they are months away. Then suddenly they are only a week away. Where did all those months go? Then suddenly it is tomorrow. Where did all those months go? Then suddenly they are walking into the exam room. Why didn't I practise more over all those months? There is a sense of unreality about the whole thingy.

This is to try to explain why Katie has never been able to escape the exam room in the past, without the help of the examiner. She has struggled helplessly with the door mechanism until the judge has risen from his/her/its desk and released her. Not as daft as it seems - you have to push down one bit and pull another and Katie had only ever met handles you either turn of push down. The steward had always opened the door for us to enter the room, so getting in was easy. It was the final escape that was the problem.

I noticed that the door mechanism to the warm up room was the same, and so coached Katie in the means of escape, and made her practise doing so.

I go in with the candidates and play their pieces with them, then leave. On Katie's return to the warm up room where I was waiting with the next candidate I asked her, "Did you escape smoothly this time?"

"YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS" came the triumphant reply.

That called for a high five and an extra therapy.

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Joel is a typical example of, "the bigger they are, the softer they are". 15 years old, over 6 feet tall and strong enough to stop a stampeding elephant. Graded music exams terrify him.

Joel is a chocoholic. He makes your average teen girl chocoholic look like a prissy-Miss amateur. He had picked out his therapies for after the exam. He was in his usual state of pre-exam bright blue funk, so I said, "I promise you Joel, the only way you can fail is to go in and refuse to play. Perhaps saying, 'Sorry Miss Examiner. Don't feel like playing to day. Here, have a therapy'."

I should have know better. Obviously Joel was only half listening to what I was saying but honed in on the last phrase like a perfectly behaved guided missile. I was not looking at him at the time but was alerted by the rustling of a Roses wrapper. I was just in time to stop him popping it into his mouth. Wouldn't a gob full of Roses have worked wonders for his flute playing?

[SteveHopwood]

We are back to school after the summer break, so let the entertainment continue.

Dominic again.

He missed his lesson yesterday, so I filled out the requisite BLUE form to report his absence. He came to me later in the afternoon and apologised for missing the lesson, explaining that he has not kept an accurate eye on the time and missed his slot.

Then he looked down and noticed the BLUE form. And looked back at me.

Then down again.

Then back at me again.

Then down again.

Then back up again, this time with The Eyes turned up to full volume. Now, I know that as a member of staff, however part time and insignificant, I am supposed to have a heart of pure flint in these matters.

Trouble is, aim a kid in the rough general vicinity of me and I am merely putty in their hands. I surrendered and screwed up the BLUE form then tossed it to him.

"Keep this where nobody else will see it until you get home, then safely dispose of it. Now go away."

He grinned and skipped off leaving me with the usual, "I was well and truly played there" feeling.

Hey ho. I do not penalise children when they harmlessly/innocently do the wrong thing, so I am sure as hell not going to do so when they do the right one. He did apologise, after all.

[SteveHopwood]

Folks coming across this long after the event will be unfamiliar with my reference to the Joseph musical. Read the brief details at http://www.stevehopwoodforex.com/phpBB3 ... 73#p157573

Despite the pain of the so-called 'music' there is always much pleasure to be had from the rehearsals. Take last Sunday - a 6 hour marathon. Leaving aside the obvious joy of simply being involved in helping kids to do something they really enjoy, here are a couple of happy incidents.

Not much was happening, so a little girl on stage was quietly rehearsing some movements when she spotted me watching. She stopped, slightly embarrassed. I gave her a huge grin and a double thumbs up; she returned the grin and the thumbs up and carried on rehearsing.

The hall is large and has a wooden floor. The kids found an office chair with roller wheels. When not actively engaged in rehearsing, there were always kids to be watched zooming the chair and its occupant from one side of the hall to the other. It looked like a wonderful game.

There were only two 'proper' (I will come to this later) teachers in the room - the drama teacher who was busy with the performers all the time and my fellow keyboard player. He is a young maths teacher at the school and a brilliant musician as are so many mathematicians.

He joined me watching the zooming game and said, "I ought to stop the really. Trouble is, I want to join in."

We agreed to pretend we had not seen the game and sort out the mess later if the chair broke.

----------

Another Dominic story.

Kids have their idea of whom a 'proper' teacher is i.e. a full-time member of staff. Therefore, I am not a 'proper' teacher. This suits me just fine because I use it to my advantage.

I said to Dommy, "Move over and I will play you this bit. Sit there and pretend to be Sir." 'There' was the teacher's chair that I had dragged from behind the teacher's desk. Because of the configuration of piano and Proper Teacher's desk, 'moving over' involved sitting slightly out of my eyesight.

I played to the accompaniment of rummaging noises stage left and slightly behind. I knew what was coming. I finished and rounded upon him to be faced by a Dommy wearing an exaggeratedly innocent expression.

"What were you plotting?" demanded I.

"I was looking for something to threaten you with terrible torture" came the reply.

"I told you to pretend to be Sir. Sir's do not threaten to torture their pupils."

"You do."

"I know. That is different. I am not a Proper Sir."

Dommy has learned how to deliver the coup de gras. I have trained him well.

He looked at me levelly and replied, "Really? I would never have guessed."

----------------------

Heading down the corridor on my way out of the building this afternoon I heard a student ask his friends, "Anyone seen an escaped sandwich. Mine has run away." I suspect it ran away into one of his friends' stomachs.

[SteveHopwood]

Dominic you already know about. Jess is a classmate and just a ferociously clever; I am guessing that the two of them are class rivals. I do not think you have met Jess yet, as she only started with me this term.

Come the end of Jess' lesson, I needed to make a photocopy for her, at a machine just along the corridor. Dommy passed me on the way to his lesson as I approached the copier, so they were both in the teaching room when I returned.

Dommy grinned maliciously and started up a tune from a well known film ("Jaws") that announces approaching menace.

"Jess," I asked, "is it still illegal to torture children slowly to death?"

Quick on the uptake and equally quick in response, she glanced dismissively towards Dommy and replied, "No. The law has changed. It is ok to do that to boys."

---------------------------

Nikki is one of the sweetest 14 year olds you could wish to meet. She turned up very late for her lesson just before the half-term break and I wanted her to learn something new, so we picked out a piece and I gave her some pointers.

Then I told her to do her best to learn it over the holiday. I promised not to criticise her for mistakes she was inevitably going to make. I am encouraging her to learn independently of me.

What turned up today was dismal. There were some correct passages, but they were few and far between and some of the misreadings had to be experienced to be believed.

"Wonderful sweetheart," I enthused. "You did exactly what I wanted. You learned it on your own and got through to the end."

It was only when Nikki's face cleared that I realised just how doubtful she had been looking since entering the room. I felt guilty about that and resolved to take more notice of body language in the future. I asked her why she appeared to be so nervous at the start of her lesson.

"I thought I had done really badly," she replied.

Dead right, but there was no power on this earth capable of making me say so. "No angel," I replied, "You did what I asked you to do and I am proud of you. Yes, you got some bits wrong but I told you that you would and expected it. Let's put them right."

In we dived. Beautiful child that she is, Nikki was giggling about some of her more insane errors by the end of the lesson. Wonderful thingies, kids.

[SteveHopwood]

Dommy extracted Students' Revenge yesterday, for all the times I have intoned, "Get this bit right or I will stab you with the sharp end of my pencil."

I was holding the top of his book steady so he could write on it - soft-backed book and music stand not high enough. He missed and got my thumb instead. You should have seen his poor guilt-ridden little face. "It's OK" I told him, "it didn't hurt. Honest." He didn't need to know that I had sharpened the pencil until an assassin could have used it as a lethal weapon and was wondering if I would need to visit A&E.

I continued, "Besides, think of the number of times I have threatened to stab you. Call this incident revenge for all those times." He chuckled through the last few minutes of the lesson and was still chuckling on his way out.

--------------------------------------------------

I know how you all love a laugh at my expense, so here was my day today in the form of a PM I just sent to Tommaso - he usually gets these stories first:

"Oh boy. What a day. Nothing disastrous - just the kind of day that makes us want to scoop out our own brains and beat them to a pulp with a lump hammer.

Firefox has been a tad on the slow side for a while - often irritatingly so. You can imagine my thrill this morning when it announced that it had updated itself to Quantum and promised astonishing speeds following, "A re-write from the bottom up."

And how said thrill disappeared when the damn thing crawled along so slowly that an asthmatic Ant carrying a bag of heavy shopping would have laughed at it.

It was like the old days of dial-up internet. You remember? Click a link, go for a long lunch, or maybe a foreign holiday, then return to find the damn thing still trying to load the page?

I needed to send an email - that was ridiculous. I would type a line of text, then wait about a minute before the damn thing appeared in front of me. I was livid. How many times do I have to tell people not to damn well fix it if is aint $%^@@& well broke?

I needed to go the a school in Doncaster this afternoon for woodwind exam rehearsals, so I was already in a bad mood when I left the house after one of the more frustrating mornings of my life. There are only two candidates this time, one at Upper and one at Lower school - split site about 3 miles apart. I wonder which moron decided to lump those two buildings into the same school?

US was fine, with Eva. Eva is one of the group with whom I go back a long way. Aged 15 now, she is a stunning young lady with a brain the size of Jupiter and any number of areas in which she is fabulously talented. Eva's main instrument is the Clarinet but she also plays the Sax and this time it is G5 Sax.

These Sax exams always contain one piece from the classical/romantic periods arranged for Sax and that should never be inflicted upon anybody; they have yet to cause me a problem. The second piece is always a 'jazzy' piece much more suited to the instrument. They always fly along a breakneck speed and have unreadable piano parts.

No problem if I know the piece but an absolute bum first time around. Today was first time around for this piece. The damn thing left me sounding like someone meeting the piano for the very first time. Happily, Eva has put me through this before and knows that I will have it sorted by our next meeting. Hehe. Imagine how she would have felt had this been our first meeting.

No problem. I kept the piano part so I could learn it and headed out of town to LS and Amy.

To find no sign of Amy, the entire department doing a better than passable imitation of the Marie Celeste and the door to the piano room locked.

None of which would have been an insurmountable problem except that then was when I discovered I had left my bag with piano glasses, aural test books and crucially, Eva's piano part on the desk at Reception in US.

US is in the centre of Doncaster. LS isn't. For reasons best known only to the traffic in Doncaster, it grinds to a halt at 2.30 pm every Friday. So does the A1 that bypasses Donny. From 2.30 pm until about 9.30 pm on a Friday, it is impossible to get through or around this blasted town without bypassing via the coast.

I left LS at 2.35 to flog back into the centre to retrieve my bag before it disappeared for ever. The three mile trip only took about an hour, so I considered myself to be ahead, given the circumstances.

At this point 20 or so years ago I would have written, "I arrived just in time to retrieve said bag just before the school caretaker locked the building for the weekend" but we have enjoyed a period of massive employment description inflation so:

I arrived just before the Estates Executive Director locked the Palace of Supreme Educational Enlightenment and retrieved the bag, then joined the flog back out of town. The normal twenty minute trip only took two hours, so I still considered myself ahead of the game.

And arrived home to find bloody Firefox still going backwards.

I am ashamed to say that I cracked. I loaded up Internet Explorer and went hunting for a solution. Normally when I have this sort of problem, the 'solutions' I find ask me to find stuff that is simply not available on my machine.

This time was different. I found the solution within minutes - it appears that the entire Firefox world were experiencing the same problem. OK, so a slight exaggeration but there were a lot of pissed off punters seeking the same solution.

Mind, the three stage solution did involve going back into what I was starting to describe as 'Fucking Firefox' by then, so the process took over an hour.

It worked though, and Firefox is now ripping along at warp speed."