Excuses

Any music teacher will have heard more excuses than you would think possible.

Each lesson starts with, "I'm sorry I haven't practised my flute but..."

This week I have heard:

1. It was Christmas
2. My flute was allergic to mince pies
3. I'm thinking about giving up
4. The saxophone seems like it would be a better instrument for me
5. I left my book in the spare room and it's only just been cleared out after my grandma stayed.
6.  My rabbit ate my book.
7. I just had a lazy holiday.

I have also been doing recorder work with key stage one children (which isn't easy with a headache)  They are supposed to have their own recorder but they can borrow a school one for the lesson if they've forgotten.  I don't make a big deal out of it.  They can just use one but they insist on telling me why they haven't got one.  The most common reason is, "My mum doesn't like recorders," but this week I heard the best excuse.

"It fell out of the car window.  I share my recorder with my brother.  We were driving to Scotland and my brother thought he was being so clever.  He was playing that piece that they  learnt in class.  You know, the sword dance.  He was playing it over and over.  He thought he was so clever.  He'd played it about a hundred times."

I was beginning to feel sorry for his parents. Trapped in the car with the same recorder tune a hundred times would make me not like recorders.

"Anyway," he continued, "the car window was open and he played the tune one more time. He thought he was so clever and his recorder fell out of the open window."

"That was unlucky," I said, thinking exactly the opposite.

"Yes," he said, "It was unlucky.  He could have played the sword dance all the way to Scotland and he thought he was so clever.  My parents would have stopped the car but we wouldn't have found it because it was on the motorway and a lorry ran over it."

I can't help wondering if this recorder flying out of the window of a 70 mile an hour speeding car wasn't quite as accidental as he was suggesting.

Trendsetter

I think I might have accidentally started a trend.

Trends are unexplainable and people are usually unsure about where they come from.  One of the latest, the dance move Dabbing, has been annoying and baffling teachers for a while.

"Miss, do you know how to Dab?" they shout down corridors.

 If you are a hip and trendy teacher, like me, then you will suddenly sneeze into the inside of your right elbow, while the other arm automatically extends because you have reached the age where independent control of your limbs can be a bit hit and miss.

"Oh, she's so..." you don't quite catch or understand the word they say and you are not sure if it means cool or embarrassing.

I like to think that the move was invented by a middle-aged teacher, possibly in America, teaching a module on hip-hop. I imagine a man, greying, with a bushy moustache and glasses, who trained as a classical pianist and now can't quite fathom why he's teaching this kind of music to kids who don't seem to be interested and who have never even heard of Bach and wouldn't know a Czerny exercise if it bit them. I imagine his classes liked him.  He worked to excite them and he was passionate about music.  As any good music teacher knows, moving is the best way to get children to appreciate music and so he and his students were bopping around the room when he remembered he hadn't put any deodorant that morning, sniffing one pit after the other in time to the quick beat of the music.  His students all copied and a dance move was born.

Today, I was teaching recorders to a year 1/2 class.  We had been playing B's for a while and had managed to go from a hideous squeak to a reasonably pleasant sounding, "Here comes the King," rhythm, that, while not strictly in tune was somewhere close to a B.  We were just about to have one more go when my hands got suck in a weird position.

"Shall I get someone?" asked the lovely teaching assistant.
"I don't think anyone can help.  I probably just need to rub them."
"There must be someone who can cover the class," she said.
I would never inflict teaching a recorder lesson on anyone else, so we just laughed at how odd they looked.

As I was forcing my hands to stretch I noticed the children trying to copy my hand pattern.  Later in the lesson, as we had switched to singing the gesture had spread and by the end of playtime, the whole playground seemed to be performing the new hand gesture.

It will be interesting to see what they call it.