individual lacks the vocation for our kind of work; cheerfulness and
optimism are needed to get results in our classes.
As a normal rule each lesson lasts an hour and is given jointly by
three or four student teachers, one of whom is in charge of voice
training, the second of musical appreciation, and the third of musical
history, rhythm or singing. In this way students learn that everything
counts and that everything must be done. Moreover, parcelling out
the work in this way prevents the more nervous from having time to
get completely out of their depth, which would have a disastrous effect
on the children. I also arrange for the team giving a Iesson to consist
of people of varying temperament: thus if one of them lets the class
slacken off a little the next rouses it again. I intervene myself when the
class is wasting its time or when the lesson is going badly, though I
prefer not to do so at all.
What I have been saying applies more particularly to our first-year
students: in their second year they are no longer beginners. In their
third year, the student teachers arrange their own teams, plan their
own lessons and use what exercises they like.
During the first and second years,lessons given by students are attend-
ed by all the rest of their class, who note down any remarks or criticisms
that may occur to them; thus everyone is effectively engaged during
classes. When the children are dismissed, I collect the students’notes and
read out selections which we then discuss. Notes are also taken on the
children and all I have to do for the final reports is to summarize these.
As we have a special course on instruction by means of gramophone
records, in my own class live performances are used almost exclusively
for teaching musical appreciation: a music teacher must be capable of
giving his class a workmanlike performance as a singer or instrumen-
talist and this adds enormously to his prestige. So we get performances
on the piano, violin, ’cello, flute, small instrumental combinations,
singing, etc. What really delights the children, to whom mixed voice
choirs are still a novelty, is singing with the young men and women.
This year we were able to take a fifth-grade class through some of the
choruses of Honegger’s Jeanne atl Bdcher. They thus got acquainted
with this work in a direct and living way that would not have been
possible by means of records.
In this way we train pupils for the practical teaching test in the exa-
mination. This is probably the most searching of all the tests, consisting
of ten minutes’ instruction to a strange class on some point of musical
language; there is no ‘tie up’ with anything else and it must be brisk,
positive and effective.
singke
(singke)
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