Term 2 Week 1

I’ve survived 1 term! 1 down,  3 more to go. This is the start of the 2nd; will be a fast one though.

For GMP, started the Sec 1’s on the new (and 2nd) song they will be learning on the xylo. Difficult yet easy. Some classes managed to learn it pretty well. They were probably the smarter ones who spotted the patterns in the music. Others, even after telling them about the patterns in the music, still took quite a while before they caught it. But I’m confident they will be able to master this song soon enough. Will have to get the 3rd song ready soon!

I’m getting increasingly frustrated with the disappearing (and appearing) acts of some of my Music pupils in my Sec 3 O Level Music class. They are namely from other schools. I have absolutely no way to keep track of them except through the hp. Unlike pupils from AI where I can breathe down their necks in their classes or even along the corridors. That’s the reason why many schools are often not keen in running centres. Somehow the priority of Music as a subject in the other non-music schools is undermined. As a result, students readily miss lessons for the slightest invalid reason such as “detention”.  It becomes difficult to know how many handouts I need to prepare for the class, much less on how to help these pupils when they decide to magically appear in class again. In fact a couple of them have missed CA1 because they were absent for the test. I could not do a re-test as the Music papers runs like a listening compre exam, thus pupils can’t be left at a corner to do the paper. So, as an outlet for my frustration, I initially wanted to “shoot” an email to the Principal of the school with pupils who perform the best of disappearing act. But after careful thought, I just shot the email to the HOD Aesthetics instead. He replied and apologised and told me he would look into the matter.

In this situation, in all honesty, I’m not too concerned about the learning of the disappearning students. What I’m concerned about is the dynamics of the class. Having these people disappearing and reappearing at their whims and fancies just sends out the wrong message to the rest that it’s ok to do that. I hope the rest of the class does not feel that their regular attendance has been undermined as a result of these inconsistent pupils. I try as often as I can to emphasise the need to be punctual and regular in attendance, but no and then I still do get pupils who would sometimes miss lessons because they had something on in school. Sigh…