Paul finally teaches a music lesson!
on So Now It's Cambodia (Cambodia), 08/May/2010 07:52, 34 days ago
For those of you who think I’ve spent too much time enjoying the high life out here you’ll be glad to know I finally broke out of my retirement slumbers back in January and taught a music lesson! In fact, I taught two! This was just before we went to Phnom Penh for 2nd. language training and then to Bangkok for my op. - soit’s not been possible to follow it up yet but maybe soon.One of our new friends called Mary, who is a VSO volunteer in education based in Sisophon (shown above with Alison) invited me to one of the junior schools she works in in Koak Lun. The original plan (or at least I thought it was!) was that I would go along and sit in on some lessons to see what went on and to help a bit if there was an opportunity. Basically an observation.Those who work as Education Advisors do mostly that– sit and watch, make notes and discuss ways of improving lessons with the staff afterwards. They may get involved in preparing materials with them (the notion of preparation doesn’t exist here!) and maybe teach part of a lesson to demonstrate techniques. Any teaching/presentation has to be donewith the aid of the VA who will stand beside you and translate.Well Mary had other plans! She very charmingly persuaded me I couldn’t take a half hour taxi ride out to her village school just to watch when I could do all that music!!!So I found myself agreeing to deliver a music lesson. Where to start with no background information, no equipment, no electricity and pupils who had never had a music lesson in their life?!I bravely thought it would be fun to do some singing warm ups to see how they sang and get them working together then work on some rhythm clapping leading into a little Samba piece.There is not much at the school– a simple row of classrooms with tables and bench seats. The staff room is an open hut with benches outside near the main road (shown above with 2 lady teachers who weren't there that day).  In the picture Mary is shown with the school director. I watched a bit of the previous lesson and was amazed at the behaviour of the pupils– very obedient and they stood to answer a question while making a praying gesture with their hands up to their mouths making it even harder to understand them. It was all very serious.After a whole staff meeting with Mary - so a total of 4 people as shown above - plus myself (quite cosy in the outdoor staffroom really!) - my turn came to take the lead. I was introduced to the class by Jo the VA. The class is shown in the other picture above. He’s a bright and lively character who helped enormously. Very polite greetings were exchanged then I did the routines from my singing lessons at home getting them to loosen up a bit - stand and breath and stretch and pretend to blow out candles etc. The pupils were very tentative though I think they found it fun – they simply weren’t used to doing anything other than sitting in rows and learning by rote etc.Jo entered into this with great enthusiasm copying everything I did as you might see from the photos! I then did the football chant“olay” working the pitch higher each time. The singing was very inhibited and certainly not as enthusiastic as I had expected. Although I’d thought about it it hit me hard when I had to miss out the version we used at school imitating west country accents as it would mean nothing to them! I suspect even the vowel sounds we were singing were strange to them - I felt a long way from home!!Having said all that we got reasonable results in the end in spite of Jo taking over at times and singing the wrong notes to them - but admittedly with great gusto! I was speaking partly in Khmer and partly English– eventually I had to make it very clear to him that I would do the music and he would do the translating!I then went on to the rhythmic clapping. Easy?? No!! They had no previous experience of this so they just didn’t know what to do. Even though it was translated if I said clap this rhythm after me, there was a stony and terrifying silence! It then got “pythonesque” and they would clap while I was clapping to demonstrate! (be patient I kept telling myself!). We made some progress and gradually made thepatterns more complex but I felt their sense of rhythm left a lot to be desired compared to children back home.I then went into the Samba piece and got them to repeat simple patterns to signals I gave them. At home I would have used a Samba whistle but didn’t have one so used my trumpet instead! It was getting to be quite hard work clapping, playing the trumpet or banging out a rhythm on the table with my spare hand! All the while talking in a mixture of Khmer and English with instructions like s’dam = listen or chop = stop and in intense heat as there was no classroom fan or air conditioning.They were finding it quite difficult to repeat the rhythms I gave them so I abandoned plans for complex syncopated rhythms which are at the heart of Samba and just kept it simple.I had planned to take the children (aged about 10) outside for a performance to walk around as if in a Samba parade and tried to help them understand the context of this music. This was difficult because they hadn’t heard of Brazil or South America or just about anything that would make any sense! We had absolutely no resources available to show them either. I think they realised by the end it was some sort of celebration in another country.With the help of the indefatigable Jo we got them outside and into a circle and (eventually!) all facing the same direction. I gave the trumpet signals, they clapped and lo and behold they walked around in a big circle clapping the few rhythms we learnt while I played a jazzy Samba tune on my trumpet. It worked!!! Great fun and immensely rewarding in the end.Well it’s one way to work up a sweat! I would have been happy to stop there and climb into an icy cold bath but they wanted more so we went inside for some more singing! This time I thought I’d revise the warm up which went quite well so they did retain it. I kept getting gestures to carry on from theback of the room (from Mary!) so I asked if they could sing me any songs they knew. This – like the clapping – was met with stony silence!I imagined the pupils back home being eager to sing their favourite pop songs (and there is plenty of pop music in Cambodia) but after asking in a number of ways for something like this to no avail Jo suggested they sang something he knew they would know. This turned out to be the National Anthem! They sang it really nicely together and I was treated to about 1,000 verses!! Once having got them to start they wouldn’t stop!!I was encouraged to hear them singing together and would like to develop this but repertoire is clearly going to be a problem.The other class is shown in this picture above. As far as other work is concerned, they are limited by having no instruments at all so if I do it again I might try getting them to bring in things they can hit to bash out a rhythm.It makes you realise the difficulties they’re working under. Almost everything I thought of to make the lesson interesting and informative was limited by lack of equipment - including electricity. So no recordings to play, no You Tube videos to watch or projectors or interactive whiteboards to display information – eg. a map of South America or pictures of the Carnival - no books.The thing that made the biggest impression (apart from the heat) was the lack of spontaneity. The pupils were incredibly unresponsive– not something I’m used to. This seems to be mainly due to their education being mostly rote learning and written exercises. The pupils were so well behaved - maybe they’d been terrorised into being on best behaviour for their visitor – I hope not. I think they enjoyed it but their inhibited behaviour made it hard for me tell at times - I'm sure the pupils back home would have been "buzzing" in the same circumstances.I have discussed this with the Mary who set this up and the staff– all 2 of them and the school director. They were very nice and enthusiastic about it but I wandered if it would do any good. They said one benefit was to show them there are other ways of structuring lessons to give variety and to stimulate the pupils.My ideas have been taken on though but adapted. Mary had previously persuaded the director to work on achieving a better start to the day by taking the pupils outside and talking to them, telling them stories , telling them jokes– anything that would get them focussing, working together and in a positive frame of mind for the start of lessons. This was partly because the day would start with lessons but teachers would be late or when they turned up they had nothing prepared.Mary’s idea was to give the teacher’s preparation time before lessons which didn’t involve them giving up extra time. The director took this on board and he’s absolutely loved it and I’m sure it must have benefitted the pupils. On a recent visit Mary found them walking around in circles singing and clapping! So he’s adapted the singing and samba activities to make a stimulating activity for the whole school (2 classes!). Well done Mr. School Director!I was delighted to hear this and thought maybe all the effort was worthwhile after all.