So Exciting

I wasn't really looking forward to today.  How could a normal primary school with one part time, unqualified but admittedly quite enthusiastic and tired music teacher be nominated for a national award in music when the other schools were amazing, with recording studios, 17 music teachers and every instrument and facility a child could wish for?  I was feeling like a fraud and quite sick about the idea of going to an award ceremony, where I was sure I would feel out of place.

 I think I've been quite horrible to live with since we heard about the nomination. I've not slept, I've been snappy and irritable and so I would like to apologise to anyone who has had to deal with me and say that I think it might be over now.  I was worried that if we won I would feel like even more of a fraud but I have had such a lovely day I think I'll be OK.

I was a little worried when we first got there.  I don't have a natural understanding of football and so getting into the Emirates Stadium was a challenge.  Once inside, it became clear that there was another outside on the inside and quite frankly, I found that bizarre.  We thought that there were men on the pitch playing golf, which made me feel a little more at home, as the Long Suffering Husband has a club or two of his own, but on closer inspection I think they were ground staff doing clever things to the grass.

The champagne flowed and even my glass of water had bubbles.  We talked to a headteacher who said she loved music too and had trained at the Guildhall and I started to slide into the corner.  Even people nominated for awards other than music were more qualified than me.  I was saved, however, by a lovely lady with interesting pink shoes.  She sat next to me and we discussed how we didn't know how we had come to be here.  After a little champagne she decided to go off and find out the answers to the competition, which you had to do by talking to all the sponsors at their stands.  I decided to enjoy sitting quietly with my bubbles, as in the run up to Christmas that is something I can rarely do.

When the lady with pink shoes came back she showed me a brilliant set of post-it notes that works like a slinky that she'd got from one of the stands.  With her colleague, she had been round and talked to everyone and was beginning to have a great time.  They'd answered all the questions and entered  their questionnaire into the prize draw. I snuck off to the loo, bagging myself a post-it note slinky on the way and then we were called into dinner.

We were on a table with some people nominated for a catering award, the music award sponsor and another school nominated for music.  I needn't have worried.  Yes, they were music teachers from an Independent School but they were proper Midlands musicians; A trumpet player and a clarinetist and so within a few minutes the viola jokes were flying.  We talked about our schools, their upcoming performance of Sweeney Todd, how having a boys school doesn't have the problem of 'choir's for girls' and how they have a joint choir with the girls school for the 16-18 year olds (unsurprisingly, that one is extremely popular!).  They suggested that one part time music teacher for 300 children might mean I was overworked.  I laughed.  I would have been really happy if they had won.

They announced the winners of the competition to go and collect their bottles of champagne, which included the lady with pink shoes and her friend.  

The first course came up and I thought it was a small but interesting salad, so I picked a little bit up with my fingers, which I know is very bad manners but I was intreiged and a waiter came scuttling over to explain that it was just the garnish for the soup that was just about to arrive and be poured into the bowl.  

The soup was a delicious parsnip and cumin, followed by a juicy bit of chicken with a cranberry infused jus (or gravy to you and I), saute potatoes and a parcel of veg, wrapped in a bit of leek followed by Christmas pudding and mince pies.  Before they announced the awards I thought  I'd pop to the ladies quickly.  My headteacher looked a bit worried and said that she would kill me if I didn't come back in time.  While I was there I met the lady with pink shoes and said how pleased I was for her for the champagne win.  She said that a cuddle and photo with Roger Black had been the most exciting thing that had ever happened to her.

When I was washing my hands and checking my mascara wasn't running all down my face her friend came in and kindly warned me that I had my dress tucked in my knickers.

I was back in my seat in time.  Roger Black gave a really nice little speech and showed us a video of Olympic things and started to announce the awards.  The music award nominations came up on the screen.

Roger Black said something about enthusiastic singing and I stopped listening and turned to my headteacher, "Oh God, it's us!"   And it was!

We went up and I stood on Roger Black's foot.  He was very nice and said it didn't matter because it was his broken toe any way.  He put his arm around me and we had a photo taken.  Would it be really wrong of me to say that he smelled nice?  After, I apologised again for standing on his toe and he was so nice about it.  He said, "It's OK I don't need it anymore."  

At the end of all the awards the lady with pink shoes came over to say how pleased she was for me.  Unfortunately, she hadn't won but I asked her to thank her friend for pointing out my wardrobe malfunction.  It was all very exciting and surprisingly I don't feel like a fraud.  The other people on our table were genuinely pleased for us and so it just feels nice to have had a little thank you and a lovely meal.

It's not fair

There is a poster doing the rounds on Facebook of Bill Gates quotes, which encourages educators to tell their students that life isn't fair, so get used to it.  Whilst this is true it is also the responsibility of a teacher to attempt to iron out some of the inequalities.

In most primary schools there are, maybe one or two children whose parents have the time, means and enthusiasm to enable their children to play a musical instrument.

That's not fair.

 I try to give opportunities to all children who show an ability and interest in music. This takes some effort and I can see why it doesn't happen in most primary schools. I have managed to beg some instruments from our Music Hub; I have good connections with local teachers; I write and arrange music that is appropriate for each child - pushing each child appropriately for their progress. This is only possible because my school recognises the importance of music, employing a specialist music teacher for 3 days a week and because I am happy to work hard and try things that might not always work. Our music and musicians aren't perfect but they are playing.

But it seems that no matter how hard you try to equalise the system, children will perceive a hierarchy and an unfairness that doesn't exist. Children ask me, "When am I going to move up?", "What will I play when I've done the flute" . Some believe that sitting nearer the back makes them better. There are children who take the more simple music to the back row to give the impression they are better and I never stop them because I want them to play together, sitting where they feel comfortable, playing the music they can play as well as they can play it. When they can play harder music, I write them a new part.

I completely understand that children want to get better and encourage this, recognising that competition between students is usually very good for encouraging practise. However, I've recently encountered a cry of 'it's not fair' that has made me bristle. There are some children who want me to hold others back. "It's not fair," they cry, "she always gets the hard part. Why can't she play the easy part for once?  Make her play only Bs As and Gs."  This would be the dumbing down route, that teachers are so often accused of taking, to pitch the work at the lowest level so that no one feels they can't achieve and I refuse to give in to those demands.  I know this only made me cross because to be accused of not being fair when I am working really hard to make sure all the children have something they can play, therefore making the group open to everyone is an injustice in itself.

 The funny thing is, whilst their argument annoyed me, I agreed. I have arranged a piece, where it's all backwards, giving the beginner players the tune and the more advanced players just a few notes of long, slow playing to accompany.  I am not dumbing anything down and the better players don't mind because  taking on the challenge of playing three notes beautifully to support the others is something they can appreciate.

Jacqueline Du Pre

I have been telling my students a story about Jacqueline Du Pre, the best cellist in the whole world at the time, who was given a very expensive cello (a Stradivarius) to play.  When she accepted the instrument she was asked to play something. The world waited, with baited breath, expecting to hear a complicated piece like the Elgar Cello concerto or Paganini's Caprice but what they heard was the most beautiful rendition of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star (or it might have been Baa Baa Black Sheep).

It's true, life isn't fair but we really need to stop seeing inequalities that don't exist.

It's All My Fault

                                     

It is with a heavy heart that I have finally stopped buying my local paper. I believe in the local press; think they have an important role to play and deserve my support but I just can't take it anymore. Even the obituary page isn't enough to keep me reading.

The press, in general, is going through a difficult time. Newspapers were the only written source of news and gossip but now they are confused and I have to blame myself. Not that I'm single-handidly responsible: the 50 or so people that read what I write are no threat to the newspapers but there are bloggers, who seem to have an influence. I think of Guido Fawkes, whose political blog is often referred to in the 'proper' press. Twitter and Facebook are increasingly being used as 'sources' for genuine journalists.

I like all this online chat. I enjoy reading what people say about X-factor on Twitter (probably more than I enjoy actually watching the programme). My blog is personal therapy for me; I would be devastated if I had to stop writing it and Facebook is like an extension of the staff room gossip. 

But the press have started to treat these conversations as though they are the news. It's all the wrong way round. A celebrity tweets something about a court case (usually wrong and often breaking the law) and there follows dozens of articles in the press discussing this. I love reading those articles, so again, I am to blame, but my logical brain tells me it's wrong. It just fuels that celebrity's ego and makes them defend themselves. They look at the number of hits, likes, retweets and favourites and feel even more important. They see there are hundreds of comments but aren't bothered that they are all critical. After all, in the world of celebrity, any publicity is good publicity!

I stopped buying our local paper when what people had tweeted about an X-factor contestant took up the first two pages and the news story on page three was, 'woman can't be bothered to go out and get another bottle of diet coke so decides to stop drinking it, as she thinks she might be addicted' (this isn't a direct quote). This story appeared because the woman in question is Facebook friends with the paper and when she put that she was proud of herself for kicking her diet coke addiction as her status, someone rang her up and got some quotes. Apart from being terrible lazy journalism it's not news. It could have been a feature in a woman's magazine if it were written differently but not news. Admittedly, we don't live in a town where anything really exciting happens. There aren't sirens ringing out day and night but it is the most beautiful and creative place, full of interesting characters who, one day, may go onto be the next big thing.

How much better would it have been if the local paper had covered every gig of the boy who went on to end up on X-factor or featured the girl with the YouTube channel's story for the last 5 years before it was picked up by the Daily Mail?

Yesterday, I went into the High Street and was amazed to see a new lane of unusual independent shops had opened up. Talking to the shop owners I discovered it was opened on the first of November by the man who runs the very popular independent coffee shop (he had nothing to fear from Costa), who was determined to bring back some of the character of the town as it used to be. Now, that's a story I would have expected to see on the front cover of the town's paper but I know I hadn't. I checked the paper's Twitter feed (you don't actually have to buy a paper to read it now) and couldn't find anything. I did find an article on the other paper's site (I don't normally read that one because it covers too big an area) about a 19 year old opening a sweet shop on the lane. To be fair, it was a big week for news. The x-factor contestant had a huge twitter following and Facebook was full of blown over bins, trees and fences from the storm.

Local papers are important and I do feel guilty for not buying ours anymore. If it folds, it could be all my fault!

Tart

This morning I had a conversation about feminism with some friends on Twitter.  This week's Secret Teacher article in the Guardian  discussed why 'feminism is still  a dirty word in the classroom.' http://www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/2013/nov/23/feminism-classroom-dirty-word-secret-teacher and I am really encouraged that people are starting to discuss the linguistics around the word feminism.  I am glad that we are starting to have these conversations.  Until there is global equality between men and women and girls and boys then feminists still have work to do.  The secret teacher notes how women do not appear in the History curriculum but we know that there were women in history.  Women have always been there and doing things.  It's just that no one ever thought that what they were doing was important enough to write down.  That's why it's called his-story; half of it is missing.

We know (those of us discussing the subject on Twitter) that if we admit to being a feminist then many people, who we know to be intelligent, well educated, thoughtful individuals will look at us as though we are strange beings from outer-space.  They say, "You can't be one of those, you have such nice shoes."

The solution could be to change the word.   We could call people who want to fight or argue for gender equality personists but we shouldn't have to. The word isn't the problem.

I pointed out on Twitter that all female words are considered to be bad things.  In our society, male seems to equate to good and female bad.  My friend questioned, "All of them?" and so I've been trying to think of any female word that was good and so far I've failed.

Cow, sow, bitch, pussy, queen, vixen and mare are all female animals that are used as insults.  The only female animal names I can find that don't seem to be particularly insulting are Jill, hen, tigress and pen.  Male animal names are less often used as insults and often seen as compliments; buck, bull, ram, stag, macho (male llama) and stud.  Sexual part words from both genders are considered to be insulting but the very worst words are female.  Given a choice, you'd rather be called a dick than a cunt.  It was hard to type that second word, which just shows how bad it is.  There are more euphemisms for female parts too, so there are more choice of insults available. Even worse, words that just mean female person are insults.  "You throw like a girl," "Just a little Princess," "That woman,"

Some things that are bad have male attributes and therefore end up seeming good.  Any boy who dares to show his emotions is told to 'man-up' because bottling everything up and being emotionally retarded is a male characteristic and although we all know it is really bad, it therefore becomes good.  Being sexually promiscuous is bad for a woman and good for a man.  Women are tarts, whores, sluts, slags and men are studs.  The line in Grease where she says, "Tell me about it stud," would have been a whole lot different if he'd said to her, "Tell me about it tart!"

Tell me about it, stud

I recently read a very interesting paper about gender representations in children's literature by Janice McCabe http://www.vanneman.umd.edu/socy428/McCabeFGPT11.pdf, where they found the balance between male and female characters is skewed towards the male.  This was particularly noticeable when the character was an animal and that when animals were not assigned a gender then parents reading the book would automatically call the animal 'he'.  

We all do it and you may be reading this, thinking that I've gone totally crazy, focusing on the use of a words in this way.  After all what does it matter?  There are good men and excellent women who use phrases like, "throw like a girl," and it doesn't make them not want equality.  I know that but it doesn't hurt to understand how ingrained into our language the negative connotations of being female are.  We need to remember that it's good to be a girl, a woman, a princess and that tarts are wonderful.

Sticky Walnut Tart

Don't Fly Too Close to the Sun

Primary schools probably unwittingly shape the mental health and attitude of their pupils.  Children who go to certain Prep schools grow up with a sense of entitlement; they know they are the best and therefore only the greatest things will come to them.  My school was a bit different from that.  I was left feeling as though it wasn't seemly to be too good at anything, that trying hard and succeeding against the odds was more important than anything that comes easily and that you will be horribly disfigured if you had firework parties.  I made all of these assumptions from school assemblies.

I liked assemblies.  They were a chance to practise sitting cross legged on the floor in a way that takes up the most possible room.  (I can see now that this was an early love of Yoga)

Sukhassana - or the assembly pose.

You could drift off and have your own thoughts for 20 minutes at the beginning of the day and wake yourself up with a bit of a sing.  I feel sorry for today's children who don't start their day with an assembly to wake up but have to wait until the afternoon, when they are already awake and have to actually listen.  As a consequence of the early morning assemblies I can only remember a few.  The first I remember, is the annual firework assembly.  Each year they would show us pictures of horribly disfigured children.  I particularly remember one, where my teacher talking about a pupil she taught who had a firework blow up in her face and the delight this teacher, in her floral skirt and comfortable shoes (that is the only bit of a teacher you see when sitting cross legged on the floor), expressed as she paced up and down the length of the hall describing injuries in full horrific, technicolour detail.  I also remember how guilty I felt later in the day when she tried to open the vertical blind and it fell off the wall and hit her on the head, causing it to bleed and her to be rushed off to hospital.  You might think that I had no reason to feel guilty but all through the assembly I was thinking, "I hope something horrible happens to you and someone enjoys telling everyone about your injuries."

The second assembly that stuck in my mind was the one about someone from the war who had their legs blown off and when he overheard the nurses saying that he couldn't survive he decided to get better.  This was given by our headmaster, who was rather keen on corporal punishment.  I remember the boy sitting next to me who was already well acquainted with Sir's slipper saying, "I bet he would have beaten that man for not trying to walk even if he was sat in bed the next Shakespeare play."

The final assembly I remember from my Junior school days was one given by a new headmaster, who arrived in my final year.  We all called him 'Baggy Adams' because he always wore the same pair of brown trousers that had a rather saggy bottom (again, the view we had of him from the floor). He told the story of Icarus.  I think he probably went through lots of Greek Myths because I remember tormenting my little sister by telling her that her hair was all snakes and that she better not look at me because she would turn me to stone.  The story of Icarus struck a chord with me, though. The idea that you could get into trouble if you tried to be more than you were destined to be; that flying too close to the sun could only end in disaster; your wings would melt and you would come crashing to the ground, has stayed with me for all of my life.  

I fear that I am flying a bit too close to the sun at the moment I can feel my wings might be about to melt.  What if someone finds me out?  Soon, someone will realise that I'm a fraud; that I'm making it all up as I go along; that I'm just lucky to be working with talented children.  

If only I'd gone to a school where they told stories in assembly of Hercules and Theseus but then I would probably end up like the ex-chairman of the Co-operative Bank and really have something to hide when I finally get found out.

Choir's for Girls

There is still a lot of work to do to get equality between the sexes.

Yesterday, a boy came to see me. He said, "I'd really like to join choir but my mum says I have to go to football club."

"Oh," I said, "I thought you loved football."

"I do," he said, "but I'm in three teams anyway and I could miss the school football club and still play loads but I can only come to choir once."

I was impressed at the thought he had put into it and although I would love to have choir that doesn't clash with any club to force children to make difficult choices, there just aren't enough hours in the day or days in the week to make this possible, so I suggested he try his brilliant argument on his parents.

"Oh, I did," he said, "but she said choir was for girls!"

Tell that to this to the Vienna Boys Choir or the amazing Great Western Chorus that sang at the Barnardo's concert, with their female Musical Director.

A New Approach to the To Do List

Today I made a list of things to do.  There were twenty one large items on it.  I looked at the list and my heart sank.  How was I going to get through all that?

I might be the only person who, when faced with a dauntingly long list has a tendancy to procrastinate.  Once the list is started then success seems unlikely.  I have thought about not writing a list and then failure wouldn't be inevitable but I know that without the list I would just go round in circles, worrying that I had loads to do but not getting any of it done.

So, today I thought I'd make a second list; a things I've done list and I put everything on it.  It started like this:

1. Read 2 chapters of my book

2. Looked at Facebook and Twitter

3.  Watched a video (from pintrest) of a teacher using Twinkle Twinkle Little Star to make a musical.

4. Deleted and read e-mails

5. Got out of bed

6. Showered, did vocal exercises, cleaned teeth, got dressed.

7.  Walked dog

8. Fed dog.

Without my 'Done' list then I would have just been in a position of failure.  It would have been 9am and I'd have done nothing but as it was at 9am I'd done 8 things.  At the moment of writing this blog, I currently have 61 items on my 'done' list and I'm feeling quite proud of my acheivements.  There are lots of things on it that I wouldn't normally think to count but things that nevertheless take time like 'made and ate lunch' and there are the things that I did to avoid some of the big things on my first list like 'made banana bread with overripe bananas' or 'washed kitchen floor' but the amazing thing is that as I added more items to my 'done' list I felt less like a failure and more able to tackle some of the 'to do' items.  

There are only 7 things left out of the original twenty one.  If I hadn't done sixty one things today though, I might consider that a failure but it feels like a real acheivement.  

I might market the 'done' list.  I could write a book, go on lecture tours, wear white flowing dresses with flowers in my hair and explain the secret of my serenity.  Oh no....wait....I've still got seven things to do on today's list and there will be more on tomorrow's list...........  PANIC.