AMAZING: PART 2:  RICK GOES BACK TO SCHOOL!

You probably think I dropped off the earth! Oh, contraire, my frere.  I am teaching school.  How come is illustrative of life in Belize. 

Soon after I arrived here, I met a keyboard player named Paul, who was the music teacher at Corozal Community College.  (Actually, CCC is a four year high school.)  I also met a retired keyboard lady who called herself "Barbara Keyes" and played Sunday afternoons at the Casablanca By the Sea - a posh hotel out in Consejo Shores (7 miles out of town.)  I took my guitar over to Barbara's house and we played together "OK', although she has been playing alone for so long that it wasn't a marriage made in Heaven.  She just wasn't used to listening to another rhythm/chord/melody player, and there were no prospects for playing anywhere, so I didn't pursue it.  I was looking for a bass player, and I asked Paul if he knew one, to have them call me.

The next thing I know, middle of the Spring 99 semester, Paul gets fired.  He had gotten involved with one of the students, and in fact, she moved in with him.  She is 18, and it's legal, but the situation is not proprietous, and perhaps there were other complications I don't know about, but, at any rate, CCC loses their music teacher.  They talk to Barbara about teaching, and she calls me and asks me if I might be interested in helping her, but then nothing else happens. They employ another teacher who had taught before, to finish out the semester, but he doesn't work out, perhaps for the same reason that Paul got in trouble.  In the fall, they hire Mr. David, who is 21 going on 16.  David is a good musician, but he doesn't have a clue about teaching, or even controlling a class of young teenagers.  Furthermore, the Principal, Mr. Maxie, has a vision of students singing at graduation, and there is no vocal instruction at all.

Mr. David's classes are chaos.  He retreats behind his keyboard and plays music to defend himself against the students, who will go into a feeding frenzy at any sign of weakness.  They complain to their parents and the school that they are not learning anything.  (Bear in mind that everybody pays to go to school here - about $150 dollahs per semester in this case.)    Mr. Maxie puts out the word he is looking for another teacher. 

Valdimar, my next door neighbor, is one of the four representatives to Parliament from the Corozal district.  He is the chairman of the board of CCC.   He is a friend of Barbara Keyes because Consejo Shores is in his part of the district, and he likes to go out to the Casablanca and listen to Barbara play.  He calls Barbara, and she calls me.   I go out and talk to Mr. Maxie, and on the spot, he offers me a part-time job, teaching music at CCC!  

"I'm retired" says I.  I think about the extra money, and how it might be used, and accede.  In a couple days, I meet the vice-principal in an entirely different context.  "Would you consider teaching full-time?" he says.  Oh my.   Pastor Lisa, who teaches Scripture at CCC (a required subject) suggests that I might have a problem with Mr. David.

We are taking Spanish, and I visit one of Mr. David's classes right after Spanish class.  The students are on their best behavior, and Mr. David seems flexible enough to work with.  As a part-timer, I can continue to take Spanish.  I feel comfortable with the job.  Valdimar tells me that I will need a work permit, where to get the forms to fill out, and assures me that he will take care of everything about the permit.

I meet a former music teacher named Hugo.  He pronounces it "Oogo" and I think of Ooogy Pringle, one of the students on "Our Miss Brooks" but Hugo is an accomplished guitarist and bass guitarist.  He loves Jazz, but since he was Born Again, he only wants to play Gospel music in public.  He is the music director for an Assembly of God church around the corner from his house.  He is a very busy entrepreneur in the Free Zone, doesn't have time to teach music any more, but he wants his son Viktor (actually "Viktor Hugo"), who has only a fourth form education, to be the music teacher.   Viktor is primarily a percussionist, but he plays some heavy metal guitar, recorder and keyboard.

Mr. Maxie asks me to come out and chat, and then offers me the full-time job.  My title would be "Music Teacher".  Perhaps not as impressive as "Adjunct Professor" - the title I held at CU, but what the heck.  The worst of it is, it's a full time job and I'm retired.  Retirement age here is 55, and I'm going on 65.  Maxie asks me how old I am, and I tell him.  Well, that's a problem.  Mandatory retirement age is 65, and I will hit that in the Fall 2000.  Oh well, we will see - I'm on probation anyway.  I discuss the offer with Charlotte, she points out that it's only for a semester, and I accept.  

Viktor is pretty young to be taking the full time job, but he gets the part-time job that I was originally offered.  Hugo and I start working together on jazz, gospel music, and some entrepreneurial ideas he has.

Second semester, I start classes.  I have 8 classes of 10-17 students; each consists of a 40-minute Theory class, and an 80-minute double period for Performance.  The students - first and second form (freshmen and sophomores) --  are required to have an instrument, either recorder or keyboard.   I allow a few to bring guitar.   Getting them to all bring their instruments is a chore.  I write demerits for the students who don't bring instruments, and after weeks, they get with the program.

I have visions of students sitting together in little ensembles, taking turns playing and respectfully listening.  This is an impossible dream.  When they all bring instruments, I'm like a one-armed paper-hanger, running from one group to the next, trying to teach them something about practicing, playing, performing.  (They have had none of this.  The keyboard players haven't been shown how to play a scale.  They don't know what an arpeggio is. )

Some of the recorder players are pretty good, but they write down the letters for the notes and play those instead of the music.  My agenda is to give them music (which I have to write, using the computer) and show them the interesting aspects of each piece, as a vehicle for learning theory.  This is working, but very gradually.

  Rick:  "What key is this?"

  Class: "G!"  "F!"  "D!"

  Rick: "How can you tell?"

  Class:  "Guess??"

I put my bag (full of music, chalk, recorder) on the teacher's chair behind the desk, my guitar gigbag in the corner and challenge the class. I never sit down.  In the theory class, I draw staves on the board, and write music, and talk about music. From simple to fairly complex;  scales, intervals, chords, inversions.  The bright ones get it.  The others play grabass and make funny noises behind my back.  I speak very softly as I lecture, and they have finally learned to move up close to the board so they can hear me. 

In the performance class, we warm up with some old favorites.  Then they get a new piece of music.  We talk about it, and then play it.  I play my guitar, and we sing it.  (Sometimes I sing it alone until they realize that I really can't sing very well and join in.) Then we play it together in unison.  ("Unison," I say, "means one voice.") We finish up by singing "Land of the Free", the national anthem. The other day, my best class asked me to play one of "my songs."   I played "I Got My Mojo Woikin'"  and they sang doo-op chorus with me.  An epiphany for me, I assure you.

What's so amazing about all of this?  In retrospect, I have been training for this all of my life.

• I took four years of piano as a child and that's all coming back to me. 

• I took Chorus all through high school, and I even have some of the music that we used at Little Rock High School in 1951.  (Now why would I keep that?)

• I was the chorus leader for my fraternity chapter - the most atonal bunch of singers you every heard.  For me, a significant learning experience.  ("You..., stand in the back and just move your lips.")

• A couple of years ago, my friend Joe Cahalan introduced me to a music program called "Band-in-a-box." I  started putting tunes into it, and really learned a lot of music notation and theory that I never knew before.  

• In the Springs, I tried to put a Dixieland band together, and bought a music program called _Rhapsody_ which would let me do fairly complex arrangements.  However, I never took time to install it, so it arrived in Belize in an unopened box.  I installed it, and it turns out that it works remarkably well.   I turn out a couple of pieces of finished music a week.

• Right before Christmas, a local gringo showed me his guitar, a Japanese-made flat-top, with a bolt-on neck (like a Fender)  I really liked the neck.  I didn't need it (I have two guitars, a banjo, and a 10-stringed ukulele already) but I bought it anyway.   Now I really need it.

• I found my bass player (Hugo) and the nucleus of a gospel group.  

• Since I started the job, I've been losing two pounds a week.  (10 pounds so far.)  I'm running it off, running to class, and around the room.

• My blood pressure, alarmingly high before, is down about 20 points.

• My guitar-playing calluses have never been better.  (I never could find time to practice for more than an hour a day, and now I usually play for a couple of hours.)   

Among other things, I think the Lord brought me down here to teach music.  I'm making a difference. Whether I will continue remains to be seen.  Right now, I'm exhausted every day, and I really look forward to the weekend!!   I hope you understand why I haven't been writing, or updating my website.

One final piece of coincidence.  I started helping the local RC Parish with their computers; cleaned them up, recommended a new CD drive, showed them how to use Microsoft Front Page 2000 to build a website. In the process, I got to know Father Dan and Father Chris, the two padres for the parish.  Father Dan, it turns out, is the vice-chairman of the board of CCC.   Amazing.

Sr. ric