Having a nice relaxing weekend. Yesterday we went Christmas shopping and got pressies for Kate’s family. I still need to get some earrings for Kate. In the evening there was time to do some arm and leg work, so today it’ll be pressups and more pressups, I think.

I’ve found that lifting light/medium weights at a slow pace really works for me. For example, when doing bicep curls, I concentrate on relaxing the arm (and everywhere else) and then think about contracting the bicep muscle to lift the weight. When I get this right it feels like the bicep is quivering to contract to lift the weight, which I take to be a sign that it’s the bicep doing the work, and not the shoulders or forearms taking over. I’ve applied this to tricep kickbacks, hamstring curls and leg extensions, all with success. It reminds me of Charles Atlas’ Dynamic Tension, but I wouldn’t go as far as saying it’s the same thing. Tip: Don’t think about moving a weight from A to B; think about contracting the muscle to move the weight.

On Friday lunchtime the staff gave me a farewell gift and card which was nice. I liked the staff at the school, because they were supportive, and the staff room atmosphere was really nice, but unfortunately I found the students to be terrible. I didn’t need to be called a “chink” (which, for those who don’t know, is as offensive as a black person being called the N-word). There was a lot of stupid behaviour as well. I would have thought that it is a very basic thing for a student to sit down and learn to listen to instructions, but a lot of them lack that sort of basic discipline. Good luck to them when they grow up, if they can’t even get that right. One teacher told me I should be satisfied, at the end of a lesson, even if I haven’t been able to teach anything, but managed to establish some sort of discipline in the classroom. I disagreed. At the end of a lesson, if they haven’t learnt anything, academically they’re a step behind already. I’m sure no teacher would write a lesson plan with the objective being “students should learn how to behave”. To be satisfied with the kids learning nothing except to behave (which they should know); to be satisfied with good behaviour, which is a basic thing – all this contributes to the dumbing-down of future generations. “I don’t care that they didn’t learn their multiplication tables, as long as they didn’t give me trouble in this class” – is that the right way to go?

Anyway, I’m on the job hunt for one-to-one music teaching, which will be more enjoyable for me. Have a good weekend, all!