Date for Entry: (Friday 20 September 2024)
Actual Date of Online Entry: (Friday 10 October 2024)
[T1, W:03 – WD:14,
(Td:6)*].
Dear Diary,
This morning was
a super tough awakening. Daddy had to hit the window for a third time. I got
ready from the shower and had to help him clean out the paintbrushes from
earlier this week. “Punisher” called me last night to say that he was coming
back to do a touch-up with the pain. So we packed up and left part of the
gallery open for when he came.
There was a mix of rap and chutney on
the bus coming down. With too many bags in my hand, it was very difficult to
record some samples of the song with my phone’s voice recorder. Some of the songs
were good for steelpan. For the very least, they would have been fun to
transcribe.
The road was empty. Just before I
crossed the road, I saw Jesse's mummy. I went to chat with her briefly. She
liked how I grew my hair and said I almost looked like a Jew. We had a good
laugh about that.
I got to see some of the changes
that “Celia” made in my attendance form. I ended up looking at it while she was
holding it in his hand by his desk. As soon as he asked me why I was looking at
it (in concern) I told him that was the form I had redesigned for the school
record of student attendance. It was at that moment that he had learnt this
logo that I put upon documents crafted, designed and manufactured by me. He
also forgot how hard his hand was to continuously hurt me. I did not like any
of it at all. There were nine counts of painful hits from him.
I went back to my desk in pain.
Sitting at my table, I had my morning breakfast with one pie. It was also Day
Six today so "Miss Celia” and I had some free time in the morning. She had
asked me to show her the Excel file and system for doing their teachers’ late and
absence recording. The laptop needed charging. Sadly, she declined my request
to share a viewing and the explanation with the other heads at the MMT this
morning after recess. It did not bother me if I would have to do it again for
some other person acting as the Vice Principal.
Later that morning, Donald's voice
was heard calling Miss Soodeen ‘Mini.’ At this time it was the end of the 30-minute
homeroom. While looking around in the staff room, it did not look like there would
be many teachers in attendance today.
Yesterday before lunchtime, Jess
said that she would be absent today. She wanted me to do some questions with 2F
and correct their homework. I was still unsure what to do with the children. I
saw Miss Gittens briefly as she went to her phone five class. I also want to
give Mr Pierre a surprise, which was the homework he had given to 2L. He smiled
and took it. Immediately Miss Celia came and called him out of the staffroom on
an emergency.
I went to the library and sorted the
dictionary section. That was the last of the work that Miss Alexander
needed help with. Once I was finished, I had left the library but forgot to
take a picture of the work that I sorted. Recess time finished and I had to go
and prepare for class with 2F.
The classroom was humid. I ended up
doing over the scales for F, G, D, C, and Bb Major. In my version of teaching
this lesson, semitones were defined for the children for the first time. I also
drew them a short chat on the side of the board: Semitone plus a semitone
equals a Tone in three circles. I think the children seemed to understand this
concept as soon as I drew it. This was confirmed to me when using the piano
diagram that I drew for them.
Because there was no order in terms
of teaching these topics, the children were confused. I too was also confused
in terms of where to lead them. If I had known this, I would have taught them
from accidentals to scales, to key signatures, and then to intervals. They wish
to hurry and do practicals was not a good move by Jess.
Confusion also occurred for the
children because they needed to know where square brackets had to be placed for
the major scale. The children were not ready to complete their homework. I hope
that the work I have put in was enough to help explain the homework for their
next class with Jess. This reminded me of Roberts and her failure to review the
questions and their structure before assigning them to the children last
academic year.
While the
children were writing I went to the hall but the door to the stage was locked.
That meant that I could not use a tenor pan to demonstrate the easier method of
introducing the circle of fifths and fourths. Towards the end of the session, I
had a nice discussion with “Pablo” about the accidentals on the whiteboard and
he understood the work. He took a few tries of the homework and the rest was homework
at the end of class.
Some of the
children didn’t know about numbering pitches ascending and descending, hence
the issue with labelling semitones in the scale occurred. Brad and Ravin got
help too along with Isabella. She said that she had fought a lot last night to
try and make an attempt at the homework but now she understood after our few
conversations on the work reviewed.
The class was
very engaged when I used Ravin, Talise and Abinna names versus their surnames
as the analogy to help explain the harmonic equivalent names for the black keys
of the keyboard. Ravin laughed in surprise and questioned how I knew his
surname. The class ended and “Mr Hunte” shared his score for “Trinin to de Bone”.
Unfortunately, it was an alto saxophone version that was created for accompaniment.
I told him that I would try to score it out over the weened for him.
After lunch, “Miss
Celia” and Mrs Santana had both cancelled on me during the seventh period. “Maria”
brought Gabby today also so I didn’t want to bother her for names to generate
her digital markbook. School became very depressing that evening to the point I
wanted to get up and leave. Another bus came seconds after I crossed onto the
bus route. I had Fai’s tonight alongside some games before getting to work on
the computer.
I got the first
minute to “This is my Flag” transcribed. Special thanks to “Vara” for going
through her Form 2 notes to find me the names of the three cultural songs they
had to. After 2 hours on the couch, I ended up falling asleep there. I could
not have gotten up to make it to the bed until 8:40 the very next morning.
There is “Trini to de Bone” which will take me the entire week to work on. I
will have to work on notating both songs within this coming week.
Daryl
Zion M. Ali
(8:02 am – 3:25 pm)
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