Klarinet Archive - Posting 000111.txt from 2007/01

From: "thomaswinds" <thomaswinds@-----.net>
Subj: [kl] Re: music students
Date: Fri, 12 Jan 2007 23:57:16 -0500

>>Once again, a knee jerk reaction to what was NOT written. I did not write
>>"ALL children there," did I.<<

No, but that you even said it about *one* student, let alone many, who may
be labeled (for whatever reason, it is not THEIR fault they are labeled)
shows that you are clueless about special education, let alone human
feelings.

People - Don't blame the kids. TEACH them. Find a WAY (you hear that,
Nicholas? That could be YOUR kid one day.). Kids DO learn differently.
Find out if those kids with difficulties have IEPs, and actually GO READ the
IEPs. A lot of kids have auditory processing issues, but they don't affect
learning music as much - they just affect the way you TEACH the music.
Verbal instructions for these kids can be difficult for them to comprehend.
You have to find another way.

Nicholas, read up on kinesthetic/visual-spatial/verbal-auditory learning
styles. A couple of easy reads: Right-Brained Children in a Left-Brained
World by Jeffrey Freed, and A Mind at a Time by Mel Levine.

Don't blame the parents for the kids having labels or learning issues. The
parents are NOT your concern. Don't blame the "rich" because they put their
kids in private school. They can just afford it. Trust me, we'd ALL yank
our kids with learning issues out of the public schools if we could find a
school that WANTED to actually TEACH our children. Public schools don't
want to do that, our kids cost them money. They also over-tax the teachers,
who are mostly only taught how to teach AT children.

As for diagnoses, the "rich" are also the ones most able to afford to take
their children to get the proper medical attention - so that's why you find
them in the private schools. The teachers in the public schools - like
Nicholas - get the kids who don't have the Dxes, the ones the schools catch,
at least.

If you can get a student with learning issues to do well, you will sell a
LOT of kids on music. These days I have more kids with LDs than I can
count. Word gets around. ;)

My son is a perfect example. No one wanted to teach him....THEN....so I
started him on trumpet myself, just after second grade. The first few
months I taught him from a "therapeutic" approach; worked on breathing and
tone, learned some notes then started reading. I didn't want him sounding
like me (I sound like a sock is in the trumpet, lol), but no teachers wanted
a kid who wasn't in their district, since it wouldn't benefit their band!
It took me over a year to find someone, we had no trumpet teachers in our
district.

But his class teachers were impressed, they had him play for the class
several times. And in 5th grade when it was time for the others to sign up,
about 20 kids from his class signed up for trumpet, lol. Partly because
they liked it, and partly because "hey, we can't let the dorky autistic kid
be better than US." (Yeah, a kid said that to the teacher, they are mean.)

Lynn

********
Karma's a biotch and she wears stilettos.

-------------------------------------------------------------------
Klarinet is a service of Woodwind.Org, Inc. http://www.woodwind.org