Enormous Kuala Lumpur Post Episode One

EPISODE ONE: RAMBLING PREAMBLE

The first Friday in October is Children’s Day in Singapore. I told my students that Canada doesn’t celebrate a Children’s Day and they were so appalled that they did research and found out that Canada does have a Children’s Day. Just, you know, no one pays any attention to it. I vaguely remember a springtime Children’s Day in Korea: parents have a day to take their kids to the zoo or something. Nice, right?

Singapore’s Children’s Day tradition is to buy little gifts for the special children in your life and say things like, “Happy Children’s Day. Study hard.” It’s only fair for teachers to play a part in this day because a month before Children’s Day is Teacher’s Day (also present in the ROK) which is celebrated by students presenting little gifts or tokens of their appreciation to their teachers past and present. (Man, I cleaned! out! on Teacher’s Day, the reason for which will be explained later in this post.)

Most teachers buy pretty school supplies or cute jewelry from various travels for their classes. A couple of my coworkers bought adorable little boxes and filled them with candy. They started ordering for Children’s Day in September. When the mass emails started going out, all “Let’s buy for our students!” I had a little panic attack because I teach 800 students. (Actually I teach 784. I counted.) Even if I spent 50 cents per kid — and what can you get for 50 cents that isn’t completely meaningless? — I’d be spending $400! Yeah, no.

When I asked them, my coworkers were all, “Um … yeah, you probably don’t have to buy anything. I guess.” And I was all, “Oh, now I feel all crappy and cheapskatey.” And my students were all, “Ms Hutton did you like the gorgeous card I handmade for you when I found out it was your birthday?”

They used their favourite sticker and then sang to me in an adorably embarrassed cluster of 9-year-old girls.

This was the best part of the card. SOMEONE has an unmarried cousin and pushy aunties.

And I’m all remembering the time I used to bake and decorate cupcakes for each and every one of my Yamaha music students.

MASTERPIECE ca. 2006

I love this sort of thing — homemade gifting — because I can put all the time and feeling into a gift. Granted back in 2006 I only taught about 30 students. As with most of my favourite gestures or lesson plans, in Singapore I just have too many freaking students for it to be viable. Poor Ms Hutton’s 784 students. But I refused to go down without a fight.

Brainstorming began immediately: something that I could handcraft that was inexpensive and wouldn’t take too much time to give. A real present would be to learn all their names, but that wasn’t going to happen. Then, I remembered that the Thursday before Children’s Day was a big ceremony at school. I remembered that all my students will be sitting there. I remembered the email I received from the organizer calling for performance acts from the teachers. I remembered that I’M A MUSIC TEACHER (weird!) I decided to write a song for my students and perform it for them on Children’s Day.

As soon as I get the footage, I’ll post it. I was famous, though, for 4 minutes and I’m glad I could show my students that I can do more than just play recorder and teach clapping games. Music skills can be useful — I saved hundreds of dollars with mine.

Anyway, that was me putting ‘ramble’ in ‘preamble’ just to explain:

I went to Kuala Lumpur on October 7 because it was a holiday

…for me, but not for my roomies because they teach at secondary schools. No children there, no sirree. Any grade 7 or grade 8 teacher can confirm that children do not reside in those sacred halls. Oh man.

I Am a Vehicle for Propaganda

I am a primary school music teacher.

What do primary school music teachers teach? Songs? Yes, some. Music theory? Yes, some. Recorder? Yes, some. Rhythm games? Yes, some. Empathy? Yes, some. Blatant flag-waving propaganda? Yes … some.

You might be surprised at how often I’m asked what I teach by my co-workers — I know I am. Every day at least one person will turn to me in the elevator, “So, what do you actually teach?” They’re probably just grasping for small talk in a very uncomfortable situation (the elevators are extremely slow and stiflingly hot.) Usually they make a guess before I can reply with my vague, unsatisfying answer. Usually their guess is, “You teach them songs, right?”

Usually I reply, “Um, well …”

Please understand that all I want to do with my students is show them that music is precision and hard work and academic; but also that it can be a social, mind-blowing, life-altering, infectious, wonderful, eternal thing. And that it’s open and welcoming. And that it’s for them. And that school has very little to do with it, because it’s about sound and people; not about study and students. I don’t know if teaching songs is the way to teach that.  Ok, sorry, let me clarify: Teaching songs is not the way I want to teach that. Or at least, not the only way.

(Note: “teaching songs” means handing them a lyric sheet or a unison line music score and playing a CD with midi instrument accompaniment.)

But I am employed by a foreign government to get students to perform to a certain standard and to know a set amount of facts, and I can’t escape the songs. The very first bullet point in the syllabus is for students to learn National songs. Ok, Mr. Minister, O Mine Exalted Employer, so be it.

The only problem is that I don’t feel right teaching these National Day songs. They’re all about patriotism and Singpore-is-the-bomb and I’m-so-glad-I-enjoy-all-the-freedoms-Singapore-offers and Nowhere-is-better-than-here, and while I agree that, yes, Singapore is a pretty special place, and good for Singapore for putting on a business suit, I’m not Singaporean and I’m not a Singaporean patriot. Hell, I’m not very patriotic for my own country. I’m not even a fan of the whole idea of patriotism. But here I stand in my classrooms, pressing play buttons with cringing finger so that my girls can dissolve into song after song about “our one true home.”

I really didn’t want this to turn into a rant, but I’ll allow myself to be whiny just for this paragraph. The part that actually bothers me isn’t the fact that I’m teaching children to wave flags madly. I think that kids should experience the frightening joys of mob mentality at least once; the part that bothers me is that the vast majority of the enormous repertoire of these songs is almost completely lacking in musical value. I am totally going there. Paint me a snob. It’s the musical equivalent of eating cotton balls. I really, really don’t want make midi-accompanied, soft rock ballad clones a staple in my students’ musical diets.

To be fair, a couple of the songs are pretty good, and I plan on only making my girls sing those ones. They’ll learn the others by osmosis at flag-raising ceremony every morning.

In the meantime, I’ll do my best to teach music and geography as penance for having to teach blind pride in one’s country. I’ve already managed to teach the P6′s that “African music” is not a single genre. (And that “Africans” are not a single ethnic group.) And you thought American kids didn’t know anything about the rest of the world? Well,  … enjoy:

I was playing 20 questions with some 11-year-old girls and I was being Germany. They knew I was a country in Europe. This is an EXACT remembrance of the conversation we had.

Girl 1: “Are you Paris?”
Me: “No. Paris is a city.”
Girl 2: “Is it? How about Florida? Are you Florida?”
Girl 3: “Nooo! Florida is in Mexico.”
Girl 4: “Mexico is where rats live.”
Girl 1: “Africa?”
Me: “That is a continent and it’s not in Europe.”
Girl 4: “I had a map once.”
Girl 1: “You’re England!”
Me: “No.”
Girl 1: “Ireland!”
Me: “No.”
Girl 1: “Paris!”
Me: “You guessed that already. Do you want me to pull up a map of the world? Will that help?”
Girl 4: “No. Don’t bother. We don’t learn about the world.”
Girl 3: “Yeah! I thought Canada was at the bottom of Australia until you showed us that picture.”
Girl 4: “The picture of a map!”
Girl 2: “Are you Italy?”
Me: “Good guess! But no.”
Girl 2: “Rome?”
Me: “Rome is a city in Italy. So no.”
Girl 4: “Isn’t Europe in Asia? Is this a trick question? Can I go to the toilet?”

Recorder chores and petrichor

It finally rained.

But first: Primary 3 (P3) music class (P3 is the same as grade 3.)  I don’t know what happens to P3 students here. I direct P1′s and P2′s in choir, and I also teach P4 – 6 music classes. P1 and P2 are shockingly well-behaved, all listening with enormous, doting eyes; P4-6 are pretty much little people and respond in hilarious half-grown-up ways to humour and classroom etiquette. P3′s seem to be channelling all the issues of the other grades. Get it over with all in one hellish year.

They’re still sweet little girls, and they’re hilarious, but they are all over the place and I don’t have the class time to join them.  We’ll be talking about posture and suddenly one will launch into a monologue on the joys of swimming; she’ll stand up and everything! Another will catch her enthusiasm and support her by yelling out all the different coloured birds she knows. And all semblance of a lesson crumbles as the rest of the girls tell me about a) why her brother may have stolen her recorder, b) the benefits of putting ones shoes on the wrong feet, c) carpet burns, etc. They just spew out their trains of thought at any old time. They have no filters

Ok and yes, it’s hilarious. I appreciate that.  But I feel like I have to do something with them.  I decided to see where they had left off, recorder-skillz-wise.

*angry buzzer sound* Nothing. Zip. Half of them didn’t know how to hold their recorders: hands in strange twisted positions, mouthpieces on backwards, fingers nowhere near the finger holes, chaos. If you’ve ever gone through an elementary school music program, you’ll know that players need to use very little air to create a half-decent tone. (A fully decent tone is a rare miracle. When I was in grade 5, our music teacher brought in a professional recorder player who had this gorgeous wooden instrument with the sweetest tone. My class was frustrated for weeks trying to make the same nice sound. ) Blow a little too hard, pop up an octave. Blow a little more than a little too hard, THE DEATH SQUEAL. It is a thousand times worse than a squeaky grade 7 saxophonist. Times 41 for 41 distinct and individual DEATH SQUEALS.

Hell.

So we’re starting from scratch! I feel like a drill sergeant. “Recorders up!” “Recorders down!” And I feel like my primary school music teacher. “Practice in front of a mirror!”

I guess I am a primary school music teacher. Oh sweet lord.

But it rained after nearly a week of no rain. Sweet, sweet petrichor.