SMK Musical

Fulbright ETA in Malaysia. I am a mediocre guitarist and vocalist who likes to sing with her students. My students like it too. Sometimes a little too much.

[smkmusical-blog]

story: if my heart could speak.

Warning: Long. Read at your own risk.

At the beginning of March, I was faced with a rather pressing worry that I had not, but probably should have, anticipated. My speaking workshop for forms 1 and 2 (ages 13 and 14) was losing members - originally capped at a whopping 70 students and broken into three groups, workshop attendance was dwindling to fifteen or fewer students per session. One of the students informed me that it was because students had realized workshop was required to perform regularly; even though the workshop students wanted to sing, they decided to drop out with no explanation, rather than face that stress.

I was more sympathetic to the students than they knew - at age thirteen, I had been ridiculously shy, to the point that I would rather run across the field than be introduced to someone new (true story - and this is coming from someone who absolutely hates running). I had been conditioned to perform, thanks to years of piano lessons, cello lessons, and orchestra rehearsals, but that didn’t mean that I enjoyed it. 

Nevertheless, all of those recitals and concerts during my teenage years taught me a valuable lesson: mistakes are not the end of the world. Even if your fingers fumble the notes you’ve played a thousand times; even if you accidentally fling your sheet music to the floor in the middle of the orchestra; even if you screw up so thoroughly, so epically, that your teacher gently interrupts and tells you to start over from the beginning; life goes on. The humiliation passes, and you learn what to practice, telling yourself: next time will be better. Next time, next time, next time.

I knew what I had to do.

Early every morning, students are gathered for morning assembly. Announcements are made, important business is carried out. I usually am not present at these assemblies because they are conducted almost entirely in BM, and I never have any announcements for the students.

But one gray, slightly soggy Wednesday in April - the school’s first English day - I was there. My hands were clammy and bloodless, and would have been shaking if not for the death grip I kept on the neck of my guitar. I gazed out at the student body (800 or so - I only just found out this week), most of their faces already familiar to me, and felt their intense interest, their curiosity. The nervousness wound tighter in my stomach, drying out my mouth and throat. I took a drink of water (it didn’t help much), breathed deep, and sang.

“They will be shocked to hear you sing in Malay,” my mentor had said to me the day before, when I showed her the song I planned to perform, and the tiny rational part of my brain that wasn’t freaking out noted, from the expressions on the students’ faces, that she’d been right.

Nearly a full month prior, I’d asked 5MPV (the all-male vocational class in form 5 - age 17) to teach me a song in BM, after I taught them “Hey Soul Sister.” They’d chosen to teach me “Andai Hatiku Bersuara” by Chomel. I’d originally intended to sing the song just for 5MPV, but the assembly had provided me with an opportunity to prove a point to the entire student body.

If I, a painfully shy person and reluctant performer, could get up in front of a crowd of students and sing a song in BM, a language that I was still learning at a glacially slow pace, then they could stand up with their friends and perform in English. They could get past their own fears and shyness and speak English to me. I showed them my vulnerability to say, “Look, I know you think I’m this beautiful and ridiculously talented rock star, but I’m a lot more like you than you think. We can get through this together.”

I’m not a singer. I have been trained as an instrumentalist almost my entire life, and have only ever sung for fun with friends. So the performance was riddled with embarrassing mistakes, since my throat didn’t seem capable of unclenching itself long enough to produce any of the high notes correctly. I finished, gave a short speech in English and stuttered BM, and skulked off to hide in the teachers’ room, convinced that I’d screwed it up badly and that my message hadn’t gotten across to anyone.

A teacher entered the room. I’d never spoken to her before - many of the teachers, like the students, do not approach me because they lack confidence in their English - but today, she stopped by my desk. “Good job,” she said, haltingly but clearly. “I was very,” she searched for the word, “impressed with your performance.”

“Oh,” I said blankly, a little startled. “Um, thank you.” I smiled. She smiled back and trundled off toward her desk. I tried to rub the feeling back into my fingers and wondered if I had underestimated myself.

I had. Over the rest of the week, students kept asking me to repeat my performance in class. Many told me that they were proud of me for being able to sing in BM, even though I had only been in Malaysia for four months. One particularly sweet form 2 boy told me that he’d cried during my performance because my voice was so perfect. During hockey practice, one boy from 5MPV who has never spoken to me before, and who I was convinced hated me and my singing, grinned at me and belted out, “Andainya hatiku bersuara~” to the delight of his friends. Though still shy, students were warming to me, excited at the opportunity to teach me how to sing their favorite BM songs and giggle at my accent.

My cup runneth over.

I told my form 1 and 2 workshop that each time I taught them a song in English, they could teach me a song in BM, and I would perform with them at assembly; it was my way of trying to encourage them to come back. Attendance hasn’t exactly shot back up, but I maintain a particularly loyal and enthusiastic contingent, who ask me every week if I’ve finished learning “Pencuri” by Mark Adam. “Not yet,” I keep telling them. “But if you keep practicing your song, I’ll keep practicing mine. I’ll keep working on it.”

*”Andai Hatiku Bersuara” translates to “If My Heart Could Speak.” One of the boys from 5MPV told me that the song is about heartbreak. Student opinion on the song seems to be split - some students like the song a lot, and some (mostly girls) have expressed slight disapproval that 5MPV taught it to me in the first place. It’s okay; it only makes them more determined to teach me a new song.

[smkmusical-blog]

story: how I tamed 2B with the power of music.

Setting: 2B (second class in form 2 - age 14)

For whatever reason, 2B is a class that has always given me trouble. None of my lessons have ever worked in that class, mostly due to the large population of very rowdy boys who don’t speak much English and who don’t seem to care to learn. No other class can upset me the way that 2B can; the only reason that I haven’t dropped them yet is because I know that there are students in that class who do really want to learn, and I don’t want to give up just because their classmates are being a bunch of jerks.

Like all of my other students, 2B loves music. They love it when I sing. Why? I don’t know - it’s not like I sing particularly well or anything. Either way, I’ve been denying them the singing they so desperately desire, because they’re so poorly disciplined, and I don’t want to reward their bad behavior. But this week, I caved. The students wouldn’t focus on the lesson. They wouldn’t do their work. All they would say was, “Teacher, singing!”

Fine. If they wanted it so bad, they could learn a new song. I threw a few verses of Jason Mraz’s “I’m Yours” on the board, then settled down to demonstrate. When I looked up from tuning my guitar, I discovered something kind of eerie: 2B, for the first time since I’d met them, was completely, utterly silent. All eyes were on me. None of the boys were sleeping, fighting, or stabbing at each other with sharp objects. No one was shouting confusedly at me in Bahasa Melayu. For the first time, we were all on the same page. I almost asked them to start making noise again, because it was so weird.

We didn’t actually make much progress in learning English, but it was the only successful class that I’ve ever had with 2B. I call it successful because every student participated. They wanted to sing, and when I asked them to teach me a Malaysian song, they jumped at it. I even taught one student, who doesn’t seem to speak a word of English and who periodically shouts rudely at me in BM, to strum the guitar while I held down chords. He turned out to have a decent musical ear, singing a song in the correct key and matching it to the chords I played. Then he ran away, laughing hysterically. Some things don’t change so easily.

The class ended with its usual chaos, as students scrambled to be the first out of the room, though the end-of-class bell hadn’t even rung yet. But for the first time, I didn’t feel frustrated and tired as I left 2B. I felt good about what I had accomplished. I felt happy.

As I was leaving, the best English speaker in the class, an utterly adorable and tiny little boy, came up to me and said, “Teacher, will you teach me to play guitar?” I said yes. He nodded with perfect seriousness and said, “You will teach me, so I can play ‘21 Guns.’ This is our promise.”

[smkmusical-blog]

snapshot: green day is back.

Setting: Outside form 2 classrooms

After class, I was waiting for the halls to clear out so that I could head back to the teachers’ room without mowing a bunch of students down. A boy from 2A (first class in form 2 - age 14) came over and stood right next to me. Making dead-on eye contact, he sang, “I walk a lonely road/the only one that I have ever known.”

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snapshot: I have died, every day.

Setting: 4AK1 (second class in form 4 - age 16)

A few weeks ago, I used Christina Perri’s “A Thousand Years” to teach verb tenses in class. As a result, almost all of my form 4 classes know the song.

Yesterday in class, one very cheeky boy, who flirts with anything that moves, called out, “Teacher, Teacher!” as I was preparing for class. Once he was sure he had my full attention, he said, very solemnly, “Did you know...I have died, every day, waiting for you. Darling, don’t be afraid, I have loved you for a thousand years. I’ll love you...for a thousand more.”

[smkmusical-blog]

snapshot: serenaded through the window.

Setting: 1TZ (last class in form 1)

Last week, I did a listening activity on verb tenses, using Michael Buble’s “Haven’t Met You Yet” in 5AK1 (second class in form 5 - age 17). 5AK1 is one of my favorite classes to teach, since they all seem to genuinely like their classmates, are far less shy than their 5SN (first class in form 5) counterparts, and actually ask interesting questions. They got pretty into the song when I asked them to sing, even though they had difficulty with the fast pace. It was an enjoyable lesson, but I planned to drop the song once we were finished. I’d already heard it too many times.

Today, I was teaching a form 1 (age 13) class as form 4 and 5 students were filing back to class from recess. I was writing on the whiteboard, my back turned to the door, when I heard a chorus of, “I just haven’t met you yet!” I whipped my head around to catch sight of several boys from 5AK1, who grinned at me through the open windows before scrambling to run out of view, all of them giggling madly.