Yamaha makes a lot of money.

I taught two piano classes this semester. They were for music theatre students, you know, CATS and WICKED and DISNEY CRUISE SHIPS. It was a brand new class for a brand new music theatre program which is now the brand new defunct music theatre program. I still got paid. I had a lot of fun, despite the class times (4:45-6:15pm and 6:30 to 8pm on Fridays) and that these students were the most talkative and the worst listenening students I've ever had. If I wasn't feeling dizzy (I have no idea why, I'm open to suggestions), I would tell you more about the lofty goals I was given for this class and how I was expected to teach. As it is, you can just have some tales of my students...

Every week the two classes would swap times (so no class had to stay until 8 each week). One week a student couldn't make it to the "later" session. He told me he had previous plans. Usually I would tell him too enjoy his Big Fat Zero for the day, but there was a huge scheduling snafu that week, partly my fault. I told him to stop by class right at the beginning, and we could schedule another time to meet. He agreed.

Halfway through the class, he shows up and says, "I'm sorry, I couldn't make it to the beginning of class." I said, "So, you're here in the middle of class to schedule a lesson for another time but you couldn't come to the beginning of class and you can't stay for the end of class?" He said yes and I laughed. The class didn't understand why it was funny.

One week I gave the classes a pop-quiz. A student took a look at it and said, "I'm sorry, I haven't studied this part yet."

Halfway through the term, my bosses sent me a spreadsheet with the grading policies. This is the grading system:
(80-100%) FIRST CLASS HONOURS

(75-79%) SECOND CLASS HONOURS DIVISION A

(70-74%) SECOND CLASS HONOURS DIVISION B

(65-69%) THIRD CLASS HONOURS

(50-64%) PASS Meets the minimum threshold for satisfactory completion of the subject

I told the powers-that-be that I did not quite understand the grading system (in other words, WTF? with all the "Honours"). They told me to just give them a grade out of 100 and they would apply the Honours. Undergraduate degrees only take three years, but if you want you can opt for a 4th "Honours" year. I figured this was just for the kids with good grades and such, but it looks like anyone with a 65% average or better are specially gifted for a 4th year.

The kids were ALWAYS asking me questions about the U.S. and were pretty pumped about several American shows and movies like South Park, the Simpsons, etc... They also liked to tell me how they met some Americans and Americans are stupid. One week a girl said, "I heard that the reason you eat so much peanut butter, which is disgusting, is that everything is so sugary there. I saw a American student putting peanut butter on her apple at lunch EVERY DAY. That's so gross! Is it just because stuff is really sweet there?" I said, "Yeah, in fact, there's a giant bin of sugar at the door to every grocery store and when you leave, you have to dip all of your produce in the sugar bin." They bought it.

Alex can attest to this one. This is, quite literally, the sort of thing I would say on a weekly basis, every five minutes: "Now we are going to play the exercise on page 25 with your right hand only. This will be on page 25. If you're not sure what page it is, it's on page 25. Right hand only. There's no need to use your left hand. Make sure you are on page 25. All that you need is page 25 and to use your right hand. Your other right hand. We are no longer on page 27. No, do not turn to page 27. Page 25, right hand, 1-2-ready-go." When Alex was there, a girl actually said (after I explained the exercise for several minutes), "What are we doing?"

This happened today and I'm probably not being totally ethical by typing it, but if you want unethical tales of teachers, I've got a long line of stories worse than this. Anyhoo...there is a student who had to miss her final because she had "glandular fever" (Australian for mono). That's fine, people get sick. Today is Friday and we were supposed to meet at 4:30. I left the materials for her on the board on Monday, and emailed her to let her know they were there and to ask if she had any questions. I saw her on Wednesday and she said she had picked up the materials and didn't have any questions.

She emails me today at noon and says, she's only had two days to look at the materials and since we never confirmed our time, she would like to meet later, perhaps on the date I put on the materials. I told her it's not my fault she didn't pick up the materials until Wednesday and that we would not be able to meet at the date on the sheet unless she could go back in time to May 15th and be present for the original final. I was told she was made aware of the time by the administrator. (I can't schedule it myself because they have to have a camera for the final so we can record their final and so they can contest their final grade later. If any student tries to contest their grade, I will happily show them the 8 ways I managed to give them higher grades then they deserved). Regardless, I'm sure I'll have to reschedule.

That's all I got for music theatre students stories for now. I will say that I enjoyed teaching this semester. For the most part, they were fun students and I don't know, I just really like teaching classes. I'm going to go eat a candy bar.