Thursday, 27 November 2014

If you haven't figured it out by now I teach piano. I have ten students (including someone I tutor french) and of those ten students I have two... That, lets just say, made me dread teaching them. I knew they didn't want to learn piano (they told me so every week) and that made it really hard. How was I suppose to teach them something they didn't want to learn? 
These two students happen to be siblings so when one acts out the other one does too. 
One day I had the oldest one first, and it wasn't looking to be much different than normal... That is until I went against my better judgement. I turned to the last song in the book titled "Indian drummer" (a song every boy likes) and I played it for him. It immediately grasped his attention. Enthusiastically, he started learning it. In two weeks he passed it off and was not content with his old books. He begged his mum for new ones and when I returned the next week he insisted he go first. 
His face lights up with a smile when he passes songs off. And when he announced how many days he practiced. 
He still has a short attention span and gets bored but that's when we switch topics and I ask him questions about his art class he's taking and friends he's  been playing with or this last week I started saying stuff to him in French (which got his attention quickly). 
His mum has informed me that he enjoys me coming now. It makes everything worth it when he started to become interested in what I had to say. 

Wednesday, 19 November 2014

The funny thing about being broke

Okay, I'll be honest... There is no funny thing about being broke. Just trying to look for the silver linings. 
Some of the things I've noticed I do now:
Walk around the grocery store with calculator in hand. Making sure I stay under budget. 
Think back to past purchases. "If I hadn't spent that $10 in high school I would be able to use that money now."
Have a schedule of where all the free food is.  Wednesday is for waffles. Break the fast. Parties on Friday. FHE on Mondays. And every other day I'm at my sisters. 
Welcome visits from my parents. Free food? I'm in. Maybe I can convince them to buy me something too...
It never hurts to ask. Can I have food? Want to drive? Can I use your hot water? Do you have a printer? What's the worse that's going to happen? They say no?