Frustrations

My job really frustrates me sometimes… it seems my company give and take away however they please. This is my first ‘proper job’, so I don’t know what the ‘norm’ is or what procedure should be or whatever.

Anyways, earlier this term I was asked to stop going to teach at one of my SoundStarts, they wanted to put another member of staff in there are part of his personal development. I was a little gutted, as this happened to be my favourite SS, however I totally understood and accepted it. A week or so later I was told I’d have to go back there as the other member of staff couldn’t teach at the moment. So I went back, after the children having been told I wasn’t coming back anymore. Then week by week a member of senior management would say to me ‘oh, I should know soon if you’re gonna have to keep doing that SS’. I got really frustrated coz of a) the children needing stability, but b) is it really fair for them to say ‘go here, now don’t go, now go back, but wait, you may not need to go anymore’… I just feel completely used by situations like that.

Then you get the case of sessional staff having work taken away for them to make up the hours for salaried staff. That irritates me… I mean fair enough if it’s just a few hours, or one small school from one member of staff, but when it’s a whole load of hours taken from one individual to be given to another, it just seems so unjust. As one colleague put it, ‘it’s like thieving from the rich to give to the poor’. And I totally agree with her. Then you get multiple schools taken from multiple teachers to give to one teacher… I mean, if you need to take that much work away, did you really need to employ a full time member of staff? I think not.

Then there’s the case of ‘oh, well, she doesn’t know it yet, but she’s gonna be doing that teaching in September’. Ok, fair enough if it’s the instrument you actually play and you’ve got time for the work, but hello… why put someone who can’t even play the instrument into the school to teach it… it’s like ‘well, she can play cello, so yeah, she’ll teach double bass now too’. This poor woman doesn’t even play double bass AT ALL. It’s ludicrous… what does it say about the quality of our teaching? What message is this giving out, regardless of who actually knows the whole truth of it all? I realise it’s personal development in a sense, like me teaching SoundStart Clarinet & Sax, but a cellist, who doesn’t play bass at all, picking up a bunch of paired and individual bass teaching… what’s that all about?

Can they do this? I don’t know… and it leads me to question… my ‘favourite’ thing at the moment!!

Away Day

So today we had an away day with work. This day has been looming for a long while.... I'm sure it was before Christmas that Janet and I were clearing out the cupboard to make more space and we decided that this massive bass drum had to go; we don't use it and David even said we could get rid of it. So we took this drum from the cupboard to the office. We asked facilities management to chuck it out for us, but they said there wasn't enough room in the skip at the time. So it sat in the office for sometime... until Janet decided we could try selling it on ebay. So she put it on there, started the bidding at £50 and we expected to maybe get about that for it. So anyways, much to our surprise the drum went for over £1, 200... and work decided we'd have an away day.

A few weeks ago we had a timetable of the day emailed... morning sessions led by Sandstone, who we googled to discover they're some sort of team building people and afternoon sessions led by Croydon Music and Arts, my company. The prospect of the day didn't fill us with much excitement at all!!

Then last week we received another email telling us to bring a long an artifact from home that displayed the meaning of our work at Croydon Music and Arts. And we also had to prepare a question that if we knew the answer to, it would improve our work, the work of our service or our service to customers. Well, that set us all off!! Too much thinking, very ambiguous and general lethargy towards it!

Anyways, at the weekend I decided I wanted to bring a soft toy dog; as I feel, well not so much now, but in my old role very much felt that I am treated as a general dogs body. So I went into work on Monday and Janet asked me about my artifact... we weren't supposed to share by the way... but we did... and to our amusement, we'd both come up with the same thing!!! We found it pretty hilarious, but it also made us think... what does that say about our work? What does that say about how we're treated?

So, today was the day... we arrived to Selsdon Park Hotel; lovely venue, sun shining, bacon baps and fresh coffee... mmmm :-) I was one of the first there, so Helen showed me into the room... which was filled with cardboard cut outs of people like Captain Kirk, Angelina Jolie, Buffy, Bart Simpson, Scooby Doo, Arnold Schwarzneger etc... my gut reaction was 'wft is this about? what on earth have i let myself in for?'!!!

So anyways, we ate breakfast (!) and then went in... firstly we had to write down our questions... I decided to go with something that Mike and I always moan about... 'why do we try to do so many things in such a short time frame instead of doing fewer things to a higher standard?' Well, I didn't have the guts to even write the full question, I stopped before 'instead of''. We then had to go around the room with post-its either trying to answer each others questions or write suggestions... random, but cool.

Then we had the guy from Sandstone to lead us in an activity... we were split into 3 groups and I happened to be with Mike and Janet... whooop... good group :-) We had a bag of props, and a camera and had to take a photo which would be a screensaver... we had to represent how we could 'encourage schools to broaden their horizons in what we now offer as a service', or something to that effect. We worked pretty well as a team I felt... and it was hilarious coz we had random props like an inflatable pumpkin, an inflatable banana, a whip, various costumes!! So we did that and then there was a vote on which of the 3 groups won. I really struggled to vote because although group 1 had a really clear image, I didn't actually feel they had met their objective... whereas group 3 had met their objective, but they hadn't communicated about the link between the images (which we were supposed to do) and their picture was really 'busy', therefore hard to see. Anyways, our group won and we got a bottle of wine each! Whoop!

Then we had lunch; buffet thing... very tasty and awesome carrot cake for dessert!

After lunch Helen led us in finishing the exercise with our questions... we had to read people's responses and identify one word which stood out. We then had to write this word on the back and pass our cards around getting people to write questions about this word. Then we had to read through people's questions and identify our own response or an action to our original question. The aim was to get us thinking in a different way and to empower us to do something to change our work. I found it a bit frustrating that the questions weren't then collected in. With a lot of issues, I feel it's only the senior management who have a say in what actually happens and changes within CMA, so I feel it would have been good for them to see what our questions were. Especially seeing that half the time they're never in to actually speak to, and even when they are, I feel too low in the scale of things to even raise questions... so I had mixed feelings about that exercise.

Following that it was time to share our artifacts... we had to place them in the middle of our table and then walk round and look at each others. We did that, and then we all had to explain out artifacts. To be honest, most people's were pretty profound, so I felt a little embarrassed/scared to share mine, but hey ho, it's important I feel... who knows what SMT thought of it... then Graeme spoke last and he went on about future plans regarding funding and how he;s been off meeting people lately to help us in overcoming the puzzles we'll face in the future. I was so unimpressed at one point... he asked Chris about the impact of music on her children's life... and to be honest, it doesn't seem like it's had a lot... possibly not the answer he was looking for. He then asked Ify about the one thing she wants for her child as it grows up (she's 6 months preggers)... she said to know the Lord, which Graeme had anticipated... he then asked how she'd bring her child up to know the Lord... which I felt was a bit wrong, but hey ho... she went on to talk about her and her husband's lifestyle and reading the word... 'HA!' I thought coz Graeme blatantly wanted her to say about music and she didn't!! So he probed it by mentioning what he heard on her voicemail... which was music... worship music! So anyways, he went on to say about his first hair raising, spine tingling musical moment which was when he went with his wife to a Polish Christian church... he is an atheist, but his wife a Christian and there was some spontaneous singing and he said it was amazing and it was the spirit of music that united them and blah blah blah... he was basically trying to say music is superior to anything else and what can we do to ensure musical opportunities for children in Croydon... hmmmm

I have mixed feelings on that one... how he went about it I don't feel was right, but I do feel that he's got the right amount of passion....

Peter Stark weekend

Wow, what a weekend...
I was kinda stressing out because I had to work loads... Friday was my normal admin day: 9-4:45, then we had orchestra 5-8. Saturday was work 1-8. Today was work 10-6. Mental times! It's coz we had Peter Stark, conductor from Royal Academy/Royal College of Music and he was coming for the weekend to conduct the youth orchestra playing Dvorak's New World Symphony. So we've been rehearsing it for ages... had 2 of his post-grad students come and take a few rehearsals and then he was here this weekend.

What an amazing and inspirational guy! He's just got such a warmth and brought a whole new meaning to music this weekend. His precision, yet fun-ness of the whole thing was remarkable. Like sometimes the rehearsals were a bit boring, yet coz he's so amazing there was just something about me hanging on his every word.

I think we learnt a lot from him as an orchestra and really hope it continues to improve our playing. And I think Bronia could have learnt a lot from him too, I expect she did. He;s just so passionate and amazing. He's well encouraging and is always says there's room for improvement no matter what... I agree.

He also said something I found quite controversial... he said that music is the one thing in the whole world that unites everyone in the whole world - it doesn't matter what language you speak, what religion you are or anything, music unites people. There's such depth and emotion in it.. it's just amazing.

So right now, I'm tired, I've drunk almost a whole bottle of rose, I've written nearly 2/3 of my research project, I'm totally buzzing and I'm listening to New World on youtube!! Whooop!

A weird Thursday!

I had the weirdest day on Thursday… we had a morning of training at work. It was only meant to be a half hour session, but it turned into about an hour and a half… it was all about making financial revisions of a fairly new computer system we’re using. We’ve had it since September and so far it’s caused so many problems. I didn’t initially understand the financial side of it at all, but now I seem to have got it. And everything clicked into place really quick yesterday. So I found myself getting really frustrated; I couldn’t comprehend why the others in the office didn’t get it straight away. It’s weird, in my mind as they continued to wrestle with numbers and I waited for them to get it right, I compared it to when I teach. I often find myself getting frustrated when people don’t just get it straight away. Like if a child can’t seem to get the note out or play the rhythm right, I find myself feeling impatient and wondering why they can’t just do it. I wonder what that says about me… is it my personality? Am I an impatient person? Do I need to find new ways of expressing things? Do I need new teaching ideas?

Prior to that I’d had a mother on the phone. The second she spoke, I knew who she was, despite her not having told me. She’s Chinese and has a really strong accent, which I, unfortunately, really struggle to understand. It sounded like she was asking for Heather, I asked her to repeat it maybe twice, each time it still sounded like Heather. So I asked if she meant Helen. She said no, then it sounded like she said Head, so I asked her if she wanted to speak to Graeme. At which point she burst into tears and passed the phone to her husband. He didn’t really know what to say and I could just hear her in hysterics in the background. It was all very strange and completely threw me for the rest of the day!!!!

The evening was nice, cell group was actually really cool. I seemed to be asking ‘why?’ a lot… maybe critical reflection has finally become a part of my lifestyle!! But yeah, a good night :-)

With the fairies!!

Wow, it’s amazing how off the planet kids can be sometimes…
I spend an hour on Tuesday mornings in quite a nice school. I team-teach with another colleague. We do an hour of what we call ‘SoundStart’; teaching guitar and keyboard. He has 20 kids on guitars and I have 10 on keyboards. Normally they’re a pretty ‘with it’ bunch… sometimes it takes them a while to grasp a new idea or a new song, but once they’ve got it, they perform well.
However today was a different story!! We started with a warm up, a song we’ve done many times before… but they sounded half asleep and when Cornelius and I stopped singing, you could just hear a mumble underneath!! Then we warmed our hands up by playing a ‘familiar’ tune, except that sounded like they’d never played it before!!!
So we move on with the rest of the lesson. 4 of my girls spent the whole time bobbing up and down, looking at each others’ keyboards and pressing buttons. Normally 2 of them are fairly able, but today they were all over the shop! The other 2 I’d describe as less able, but they do normally try hard. However today, one of them just insisted on playing ‘random chords’ to the rhythm of whichever piece we did! And the other was completely ‘with the fairies’. Like, completely with them… she’d be looking at a different page to the one we were on, she’d be looking across the room at a boy playing the guitar, and when we did one piece she had 1 finger on the last note at either end of the keyboard and was playing both notes randomly!! What was going on?! 1 of my boys never really seems to be quite there… he wasn’t quite there today, but that was no surprise!!!
Then I have the other extreme, I have 2 boys who are really very able, they learn the keyboard part very quickly, so often move on to learn the guitar part too, and when we play the piece as a group they alternate between playing both parts!!
So we play ‘Old MacDonald’, my 2 ‘gifted and talented’ children are playing the guitar part and my other 8, the keyboard part… when the keyboards played, not one of them was playing anything that sounded remotely like the tune!!! Their hands were everywhere, they eyes were everywhere and oh my life, it sounded horrific!!! It was as if they’ve never played it before, except they have and I know they can play it well!!!
We ended the session by singing a song we’d learnt the previous week. And we learnt a new bit to it as well. Then we split into 2 parts. When we did that, I was pretty much singing on my own, my keyboards just weren’t singing!! And I reckon about 3 guitars were singing with Cornelius!!!!
So yeah, all in all, a, errrr, great session!! Not!! I’ve never ever experienced anything quite as ‘with the fairies’ as that!!

Cuteness

Wow, its been a while...
My colleague has twins and they're awesome. They're 2 and a half. I've met them a few times and spent a while chatting with them at work one saturday morning. After that particular episode they asked Helen when they could see Becca again. I thought that was sweet.

Anyways, one December morning Harry & Emily had to come into the office with Mummy. So Becca spent a good few hours talking, reading and playing with them. It was ace. We read iggle piggle and oopsy daisy, played with a wind up cat, nearly managed to destroy a computer and ate Christmas tree shaped cookies... awesome times.

Helen comes back to work in Jan and tells me how they took the children to Costa in the holidays and they chose tree shaped biscuits, to which Emily replies 'they're like the ones we had in Becca's office'. Awwwww how cute.

They barely know me, but Helen says they seem to have really clicked with me and taken to me. It's so sweet and so nice to feel wanted!!!

The things I never said

Dear Gerry,
If only we knew our friends were going to pass on, I'm sure there are so many things we would say. But life has a strange way of showing us the unexpected, so many things go left unsaid.

I want to thank you...for letting me be a part of your life and Jane's life. Thank you for the times you've let me come round and hang out with Jane. Thank you for the times I've been able to call Jane and chat when she could have been spending time with you. Thank you for letting me turn up on your doorstep almost unannounced.

Thank you for letting me share short sweet moments with you and for taking an interest in what's going on in my life. Thank you for your support and encouragement. Thank you for just letting me be without asking any questions.

Thank you most of all for your inspiration and encouragement to me. I've not shared all that much with you, but I've had the privilege of being part of your life. I've learnt today so much more of you. Of your determination, your humility, your courage, your compassion, your skills, your passion and so much more.

You have 2 wonderful children and a beautiful wife to be very proud of, who will forever have a special place in my heart and life. I pray that your life will be a encouragement to spur me on and to keep me going when all seems pointless.

With love, Becca x x x