Since our friend Spock mentioned his 150-200 years old guitar teacher that managed to demotivate him when he was 7 I thought I would as this question - what teacher did motivate you into learning something in your life (it doesn't have to be music necessarily) and how did he/she do it? Did you respect him/her or fear/love him/her?
For instance when I was in the 11th grade in highschool I flunked the chemistry course, because the teacher was completely nuts and I learned organic chemistry in such a way not only that I passed the course, but I also managed to help all my college mates understand things in the first year, when everyone was facing chemistry troubles I guess fear was my motivation in this case and I didn't like it one bit, but I managed to pull my guts and go through it. How about you?
The best teachers are the ones that can managed to get you to learn enough about a subject that you don't, or didn't even particular care about.
We had a brilliant history teacher from Belfast. I already liked history anyway, but we were in our last 2 (I think ?) years before our exams so there were 2 defined courses set out.. one was Medicine Through Time and the other was The American West.
Now I had no particular interest in either of those subjects but his teaching ability was so good that he could take a classroom of disinterested kids (and kids who weren't that bright or good at paying attention) and make them interested. He could pick pretty much anyone at random, ask them a question and they'd be able to answer. And this would include the sorts of kids that would have trouble spelling their own name. The dude was inspiring and that was the key. He made it interesting. I sincerely hope he still teaches or is doing well in whatever he does because he was great.
Great story mate! I also had a machinery organs professor in the university, who was a very intelligent and methodical guy. He managed to teach me some stuff, especially knowing that I was totally uninterested, but he understood my passion for music and somehow he related all the concepts to musical ones - gotcha! He caught my interest and that's how he managed to teach me Great dude all in all!
So, who else has a nice story?
I had a lot of really good teachers that I liked, but I think my favorite was a 10th grade Criminology teacher. He was just a good, good, good old soul. Always wanted to laugh and make us students laugh. Bless his heart, he was built like a golf ball sitting on a tee. I never could figure out how his pants stayed up.
The man was never in a bad mood, and always made everyone feel like they were his true friend. I wish I was more like him, and I wish everyone was more like him too.
Before I played guitar, I played piano, and when I was about 14 or 15, my dad realized I was getting bored with my classical teacher, and I don't know where he found him, but he found this old Jazz cat named Melvin Williams...
He was also about 100 years old, constantly smoked cigarettes and coughed, and you could just tell that he had about a million miles of experience on him...
Anyway,
Every week, he would take out a blank piece of staff paper, and totally from memory write out a lead sheet of the chord changes and melody to a jazz standard... He wouldn't even touch the keyboard, he just had it all in his memory...
And we would spend an hour talking and playing different chord voicings and improvising over the melody...
I only studied with him about a year before he got to be too sick to teach anymore but I'll never forget everything he taught me about comping and improv...
Wow! As Ben says! Criminology in the 10th grade? Hell man, we had chemistry and literature and maths - what kind of an awesome school did you have?
Another great teacher I had was the elementary school history teacher She really cultivated my passion for history up to the point in which in the 7th grade I managed to get 3rd place in the Municipial History Olympics - that's a big History contest between various students in our capital
Powered by Invision Power Board (http://www.invisionboard.com)
© Invision Power Services (http://www.invisionpower.com)