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| I wore this. |
I think I almost bored my Theory class to tears today while lecturing on intervals. Oops. There's just so much information to impart!
In GM, we put off a return to guitars for one more day by teaching a one-day lesson on program music and doing an exercise where students each write a story that suits the fourth movement of Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique, titled Marche au Supplice (March to the Scaffold). We had time to hear some stories in class, but Mrs. D and I read all of them later. They were...bizarre, hilarious, full of misspellings, erratic, nonsensical, creative, ludicrous, morbid, curious, weird, frantic, and often an insight into the mind of an author.
On a pedagogical note (relish the pun), this lead to a discussion we had about how our educational system is very restrictive to the minds of many children. There are a myriad of routes through which comprehension of a subject can be reached, and teaching according to the multiple intelligences doesn't even come close to accommodating each individual's potential-fulfilling need. An example: we have a student whose mind is simply bursting with ideas, thoughts, and energy, but he has to use most of his focus just to contain himself in a classroom. He added to his story numerous unrelated illustrations, the most prominent of which reminded me of Francisco Goya's Saturn Devouring His Son (don't worry, no one was actually being eaten in this boy's drawing, it's mostly Saturn/Cronus' face that inspired my comparison). Learning music in the best way we know how to teach it to 30 students at once does not reach him, even though we both suspect he could be a great musician if given the opportunity for it to be an outlet (which would likely help him achieve in other subjects, too). He's not the only one, though, so Mrs. D, other music teachers, and I scurry to find something for everyone, but we just don't have the opportunity for more profound education. Most unfortunately, I don't have a solution for this.
At the end of this month we'll receive a new set of GM classes with new students. I'll probably be almost entirely responsible for them while I'm there. I've decided to let my expectation of maturity slide a little bit and am thus humoring the idea of using an attention-getting gimmick with these new students; an LED that I could blink/shine when asking the class to return their attention to me. I'm liking the idea, but want to see if my readers have any thoughts on it :)
Untitled 6 - Sigur Rós
