So it’s the end of another term and whilst I may not have lived up to my promise of more regular blog updates, a few things have happened which have left me feeling quite contemplative.
There has been the usual preparing of bands for the spring and summer flurry of gigs, helping students with their GCSE and A-Level recitals and not least building on the work towards grade exams. I have also started teaching some A-Level students studio recording and music tech which is awesome!
One student in particular came to mind when I sat down to write this. I won’t mention any names obviously but he’s somebody I’ve been teaching for around 5 years, so I know him fairly well.
I have prided myself on a 100% success rate with all grade exams, trying wherever possible to go that little bit further to ensure the student is as prepared as they could be before they went and did their thing in front of an examiner.
This year though, I experienced my first failure in over 10 years of teaching. It didn’t feel very nice! I found myself asking a few questions. Did I not try hard enough? Was I teaching the wrong way? Did I not push him in the right direction? Did he not put in the required effort? I was pretty gutted about the whole affair!
The pupil in question though came back in September and told me immediately he was going to re-sit the exam and promised me he’d try his hardest this time around.
Over the next 10 weeks or so, we went over everything multiple times, he was clearly much more motivated and when the time drew near, I was much happier about him taking the exam.
He could very easily have said he didn’t want to carry on taking exams, kids are under a lot of pressure these days, but he wanted to do it to prove he could!
He passed, and passed well!
It reminded me of something my Mum used to say to me all the time after a ridiculous kids TV show about a cat who lived on the Moon, cleverly called ‘MoonCat’.
Old Mooncat used to say “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again”
Its a testament to the pupil in question that he unwillingly took Mooncats advice and cracked on with overcoming his failure.
There are thousands of memes circulating the internet that remind you that it’s not about the falling down but the getting up that matters, how you shouldn’t be afraid of failure, and that to learn to succeed, you must first learn to fail. Its all a bit of a cheesefest though!
Mooncat had it right,way back in the 80’s!
It goes to show that we are not always the ones imparting knowledge and experience. We can definitely be inspired by our pupils. I will be firmly installing Mooncat as my screensaver on my phone for a while to help keep me motivated!
In distinct contrast to all this, today I had a conversation with a pupil who was wondering how quickly after you’d been eaten by a bear, you would turn into a poo on the floor of a forest.
Swings and roundabouts!
