Weirder and weirder

Really cool: about one hundred kids (8-15) playing the Mozart-Haffner Rondeau (first piece post-book 10) and you KNOW they don't muck about with tempo! Amazing dynamic control and ensemble; one girl played the first cadenza solo and then a boy the second, another girl the third. VERY COOL.

According to my interviewer I play with great aggression...which my translator hastily amended to passion when she saw my face! We had our last group lesson today and I will NEVER forget how important upside-down bows are :) just don't make me play the Bach A Minor like that again. Please.

But with my wonderful albino skin I stick out of the foreign contingent a mile, and I move about a little when I play, so I probably wrecked every photo the journalist was trying for and they said "We'll make THAT one talk to us!" (on second thoughts, it's probably because this guy works for TERI and saw me at the world convention in april)

A., I can hear you groaning. Mum, you too.
I'm thinking of it as the universe providing me with a vehicle (a nice black Porsche boxster) for change. Or possibly hotwiring it and leaving it in my driveway with a note
"DRIVE ME". As if I'd be able to resist!

So anyway, we had a nice chat about how Matsumoto and Melbourne are different, which was practically an order for me to extol the virtues of team teaching and how well I've seen that work.

I don't think they realized they'd asked the most anti-establishment teacher present to speak. . .
But someone has to be the dissonant to catalyse change. . . ooh, can it be me? Please?!

I think the united teaching approach brings irrefutable benefits to a festival situation; for children, parents, and teachers alike. It has the potential to strengthen the teaching community and the ability of that community, it offers SO MUCH more to the children, and it frees up the parents to learn from the active teacher because their child is better supported and kept on task.

Sorry to bang on about this, but I think it has huge potential. I've certainly seen teachers teach an average block, but immediately afterward they were given constructive critical feedback - just like we give to a student with the hope that they will develop their own understanding and sense of discrimination. Don't we owe it to our student/trainee teachers to nurture their ability to teach in the same way?