The Reason I Am Here

It has been a little while since my last blog post. It’s not because I have been busy, it is just that it hasn’t really been much to write about. I have also realized I haven’t really talked about the reason I am in Guyana, the teaching. So that is what I have decided to write about this week.

As many of you know GLMA has about 150 students across the board. I teach four classes which are COFONA, brass, and two guitar classes. I also co-teach with Claire and Dan in five Academy Classes (general music) and a newer class with students from Lovely Lass. Each of these groups are very unique and have brought me all sorts of challenges. They also have given me a lot of happiness and I have seen a lot of success with many of my students. I am going to miss my students like crazy next year that is for sure. I have also learned that younger students really do say some of the funniest things!

My brass class is my smallest class. I was holding strong with four students for the longest time, but now one of my students has moved out of the country so I am down to three people. All three of them are in very different spots in their playing ability so I decided we were going to switch from a one hour class to half hour individual lessons, and twice a month we get together as a full class. This has allowed me to really focus on what my students need individually. I have also been arranging music for our concert at the end of the semester based on what we have been working on in our lessons. It provides challenges and learning targets for each student while creating music together.

My Monday/Wednesday guitar class is the older class. This group is made up of adults ages 16-72. This is the largest age group I work with by myself. This class has several students who had started to teach themselves guitar using YouTube before coming to the Guyana Lutheran Music Academy. It has been an interesting experience for me to use the skills they have already learned while working on teaching them how to read music and chord charts. They are a very solid class, and are willing to take any challenge I throw them. I am hoping to have either Dan or myself write a piece for this group for the concert.

If you have read much of this blog at all you probably know the most about my COFONA class. COFONA was a marching band here in New Amsterdam before GLMA ever came to town. They originally sent us thirty students to be split into brass and percussion. I work with the Brass and Dan works with percussion.  This has been my most difficult class and has given me many frustrated nights. A few weeks ago Dan and I were getting extremely frustrated and needed a little change of pace. We decided to switch classes for a day. Dan worked with my brass and I worked with the percussion guys. Neither class had full attendance, but we got a lot of stuff done. We have decided that we are going to do this again soon. I think this will help Dan and I to understand the very different struggles the two classes have. They are all from the same group, but the brass players and the percussionists have very different class behaviors. Dan and I have done a lot of collaborating on arrangements for COFONA. Actually, it is more like Dan has done really well at adding percussion parts to the different pieces I have arranged for the brass. We will soon be coming together to rehearse together as a full band. The students as well as the teachers really enjoyed doing that when Tom was down to visit, and it is a great experience for everyone involved. For the concert we plan to have COFONA play a few songs as the brass and percussions classes and a few combined pieces.

My Tuesday/Thursday guitar class is crazy. All of these students are 12-14 years old and go to one of three different secondary schools. I really enjoy this class. They are crazy, but we have so much fun together. It is fun to remind myself what it is like to be a kid and put myself in their shoes. They are also willing to go at any challenge I might throw at them, but it might take them a little more time. Actually, I was really proud of them a few weeks ago. They had been working extremely hard all year, and I decided to reward them with a little ice cream party. I had Dan over at the house scooping out ice cream and Jell-O (long story, remind me to explain that in a later blog post) while the class ran through a song. After we finished going through the song I told the students to pack up and grab all of their stuff. They then followed me over to the downstairs apartment of our house where we surprised them. We sat and talked, ate, drank, watched a few guitar YouTube videos, and took pictures. We even took a selfie with the entire class. At dinner after classes that night Dan and I agreed that the highlight of our day had been taking a selfie with the guitar class. This class is definitely the class that reminds me to relax and have fun when I start to get uptight and stressed.

We have five classes spread out on Fridays and Saturdays that are surrounded by open practice times that we call Academy Class. This is our time when student from all instrument classes come together for general music. This is really my first experience teaching general music. It has been interesting because in the states we are blessed to have general music as we go through elementary school. There is no music education in the Guyana educational system other than the few songs they may have learned in nursery and primary school. I also have never dreamed of teaching general music. That is certainly not where I am most comfortable. This has confirmed in me that I want to do band. This is teaching me the skills I need in order to be able to teach general music if I have to though. We do all sorts of things in Academy Class. We have drum circles, we do clapping games, percussion ensembles, sight singing, and guest speakers.  These classes have helped us to build more of a community of musicians in Berbice by introducing students between the ages of 12 and 72 working together and learning from each other. It is very rare to have interactions like this anywhere in the world let alone for these students.

This weekend we had a Guyanese musician join us for our Academy Classes. Sweet Kendingo came to work with our students. I met him back in October while I was making copies for guitar class. He noticed I had guitar books and we started talking about the school and music in Guyana. He gave me his contact information and this month we decided to get in contact with him to see if he would come in to talk to our classes. Sweet Kendingo is a guitarist and singer who has won soca and calypso monarch competitions. He writes all of his own music and really knows the history of Caribbean music. You could see his passion outpouring as he spoke to each of our classes. I really hope we continue to bring in Guyanese musicians for our students to learn more about the music that is so widely known here, and for the teachers to learn more about a genre we all admit we don’t know much about.

Lovely Lass is our newest class. We just started this about eight weeks ago. We have six students for a two hour session every Saturday. We currently do one hour of general music and then an hour of instrument lessons and practice time. Three of these students are learning keyboard, two are learning guitar, and one is learning violin. These students are awesome and pick up things really quickly. I have enjoyed having a smaller guitar class, and I have been able to look back on how I started beginning guitar at the start of this school year and revise some of my lessons. It is like I am starting a second year of teaching and able to look back and say “yes this worked” or “this lesson was the worst and I have to scratch it entirely.” This is providing so much valuable experience for me.

Eric will be coming down to visit us at the end of this week. While he is with us we will travel to Suriname. While in Suriname we will do music workshops with students brought together by our Lutheran pastor friend, Pastor Kevin. For those of you wondering, English is not the main language of Suriname. I am currently trying to learn a few key phrases in Dutch, and I have found a very nice translator app for my phone that will be very helpful. I will write more about Suriname once we are there and we know more about what we are doing.

You know, I think it is good for me to take a post to reflect on teaching specifically. We only have three months left in country, and this has started me thinking about my entire year and how much I have grown as a teacher and a musician. This year has been so valuable to me and helped show me just what music education can do. I am looking forward to returning to the states, but a part of me will always be in Guyana.

I soon hope to have a blog post that answers any and all of your questions, so please, shoot your questions my way so I have something to write about!

Sweet Kendingo talking with our students

He sang, played, and lectured.

Most of the students really enjoyed it.

He even had some participate by demonstrating what music is in his terms. "Filling in the gaps"

He got a few students to sing. This is Tristar. I have never heard her sing until this past Saturday and she has a beautiful voice! She never stops amazing me!

The famous guitar class selfie