Teacher’s Corner 1

I put this post in the ‘Teachers corner’ category for one simple reason. Most of us ARE teachers. If we have kids, that is. We teach them and they teach us. The best case scenario, both sides learn something. Sometimes they don’t. We have a saying in Russia – ‘A smart one learns by someone’s mistakes. If you learn from your own mistakes, you are a fool’.

I always thought – ‘and what about the ‘one’ who doesn’t learn at all….?’.

Anyway. I’m not here to teach anyone, God forbid. I’m here to share something I learned from being a parent and a teacher. As a parent…My kids are 19 and 29 years old. They are beautiful people, irrespective of all my parenting mistakes. They are much better human beings than I am, in many respects, and I am happy that they are. I think if I had a chance to go back in time, I would….. no, I wouldn’t.  The truth is, I’d probably make same mistakes again and again.

As a teacher…. what can I say? My students are inherently good. They are brilliant, even when they don’t prepare their homework, forget to cut their fingernails or drive me up the walls with thousands of unanswerable questions.

Nearly all of them are aged 6 to 16. They all are of different colours, sizes and shapes. Irish, British, German, Iranian, Indian, African, Chinese, Polish, Latvian etc. And you know what? They all are the same. They share the same qualities. They are all kind, open, honest, trusting, intuitive, curious, emotional, creative and positive.

They are more sensitive than us adults.

They see more, they feel more and they hear more.

 

I’ll give you one example. Do you know any adults with synesthesia (ability to see music in colour)?

I personally know two, and I know of another three (Duke Ellington, Van Gogh and Aleksander Scriabin). And by the way, all of them are (or were) highly creative and talented people.

How many kids have synestesia? In my opinion, nearly all of them. We don’t know because we don’t ask. Or don’t know how and what to ask. They bombard us with thousands of questions, but we don’t really ask them much. We presume that we know everything.

Then they grow up, and we start wondering…

I played a major triad to one of my 7 years old piano students and asked her – ‘Madam! What colour is this chord?’. This is something I do routinely in order to teach kids the difference between major and minor scales. Her mother started to look worried. She looked like she wanted to grab her daughter and to run away. She thought I was a lunatic. Her little girl said – ‘Red’. I played a minor chord. She said – ‘Blue’. ‘Good girl’ – I said. Her mum looked at us like we had two heads each. She couldn’t understand what was going on. She was very suspicious. It took half of my emergency ration to mellow her up a bit.

We don’t see music in colour anymore. We lost this and many other abilities a long time ago, when we started to rationalise everything and stopped listening to our senses and emotions. Kids still have it, but not for long, unfortunately.

In my experience, nearly all of them will see major as red and minor as blue. Except of this one boy who said – ‘Black’.

I really worry about this one. He cannot concentrate, he is ready to burst into tears every time when I look at him and he says ‘sorry’ every two minutes. He says – ‘Oleg I am sorry, I know I am bold….’. Bold?! He is not bold, he is a brilliant, sensitive kid who has too much energy and two overworked parents who don’t have time to talk to him. He is lonely. I don’t teach him music anymore. I think it’s a waste of time. He doesn’t need it. I just let him talk. He has a million things to say and he has no one who would listen. Every Tuesday I can hear him running up the stairs, jumping and screaming. I can hear his dad barking at him. Then he comes in and starts talking.

His dad once told me – ‘I don’t know how you do it. I can’t control him, he drives me mad!!!’.

The truth is, I don’t do anything. I listen and ask questions, that’s all. I didn’t say anything to his dad. I am not a certified psychologist, I don’t have a right to tell him anything about his parenting ways. Well….To be honest, I tried once, but he wouldn’t listen. He said ‘Oleg, you need to be strict. Discipline, that’s what he needs…’  Discipline?? Dude, I know about discipline more than you ever will, I was a corporal in the Soviet Army! Your son doesn’t need more ‘discipline’, he needs his dad to be his dad. A proper one!

His son will grow up soon. He’ll stop seeing colours altogether., but for now he sees major chord as black and minor chord as yellow.

This post should’ve been placed in ‘Random Ramblings’, but I think I’ll keep it here. I have much more to write as I learn from my students every day. I hope some of the parents will visit this page. I hope they’ll share their own ideas or concerns. If they learn something new here – fantastic, I am happy!

If you don’t agree with something… I’m thinking of adding the ‘Forum’ page soon, so you can come and tell me that I’m wrong.

See you soon

Love and Peace