The Challenges of Teaching
My morning began with a groggy state of consciousness today due to not getting to sleep until late last night. I stayed in bed longer than usual, which put me into the mode of getting my work done quickly rather than getting it done with quality. Fortunately, I have succeeded in remembering to be attentive and relaxed several times today, rather than focusing on working speedily.
The French teacher at the nearby college has cancelled the summer school in France due to lack of interest. This is a dissappointment. I am seriously thinking about attending his classes at the college this Fall. This would entail sitting in a class full of eighteen and nineteen year olds and suffering their scorn, but this is the only way of taking a French class in this part of Georgia. Time will tell…
My fifteen year old guitar student has asked me to teach him songs by two bands; Tool and Queens of the Stone Age. Tool uses odd time signatures that will be challenging for a beginner guitarist, but he did ask for it, so I agreed. The only Queens of the Stone Age music that I had ever heard was basic three-chord rock and roll, but the selected song by that band uses a Turkish scale, a la ” Where is the Nurse ” which is turning out to be a challenge for both of us to learn. This Turkish scale is used to play six or seven different meldoies, which are maddeningly similar. The melody changes with each measure of the song. I am talking about the Queens of the Stone Age song here, by the way. I taught the student four of the melodies yesterday and will hopefully have learned the other two by our next lesson. The Tool song has a chorus in 12/8 which is not as difficult as say perhaps an 11/8 might be. My student had surprisingly good luck at learning this chorus yesterday. Quite surprising for a guitarist who has only been playing for six weeks ! I loaned him my copy of ” The Power to Believe,” in hopes of turning him on to King Crimson. He had never heard of K.C. I told him that K.C. had been the opening act for Tool on a west coast tour and that my guitar instructor was one of the guitarists in that band. Perhaps that will impress him enough to give this music a chance.
Time will tell,
I.C.