Old Cartoon

     When I was a boy growing up in Portland, Oregon I would sit in front of the TV each Saturday morning and watch the cartoons that would continue till early afternoon.  My favorites were Mighty Mouse, Heckle and Jeckle and Popeye.

     During the early days of Television a large part of the cartoons were those that were taken from movie houses from decades earlier.  It was only later when studios started churning out ready-for-TV cartoons.  Most of those seen were short pieces which had been shown before major motion pictures.  Most, if not all, were in black and white or maybe it seemed like it because my family had a black and white TV.
     What I especially liked were all the music numbers which were played as accompaniment to these animations.  Lots of shows had classical scores, or quasi-classical scores which was great for learning the classics, in a fun way.  Of course we kids didn't know we were learning we just saw Bugs Bunny conducting and some silly orchestra doing silly things while the music played.
     The other music that was used quite a bit were old jazz renditions.  The animators would do great things to emphasize the sounds being produced.  Lots of times the chimney of a building might belch smoke in the tempo of a song, or the same being true of a locomotive chugging up a hill in time to the music.  Animals on the side of the railroad might sing like the background singers.  These cartoons were filled with sight gags in time to the music.
     In 1974 my family moved to Eugene, Oregon and my daughter, Jennifer, spent her years 2 through 5 there.  I had loved the Paul McCartney songs like "When I'm Sixty-four" and "Honey Pie" so I found myself messing with the old jazz sounds one evening in the practice rooms of the University of Oregon.
     My mind went back to watching Saturday morning TV, with those old cartoons and the words just flowed.  "I always wanted to be in an old cartoon, and watch the mice waltz down the street"....etc
     The phrase "I'm in love with Betty Boop" was so true.  I truly was in love with that early cartoon icon.  Even though she had that silly old fashioned hair-do, she had those cute cheeks.  Looking at her pictures now I see that she was quite sexy with a beautiful figure, legs,..........wow, quite a knock-out even by today's standards.
     When I wrote it I was in a group in Eugene called "ME".  We did mostly original music that I had written, but this was a song contribution which was not easily performed for most modern dance settings.  Our gigs were restricted to dance band jobs because of the few performance venues available in that university city, Eugene.  People did appreciate it, however, as a quirky kind of song, more for listening than for dancing.
     Within a few years of living in Eugene I eventually moved to southern California  where I wrote another song similar to "Old Cartoon"..............."I'm Too Shy To Send You My Valentine".  But, that's another story for another blog.


Old Cartoon on Amazon.com

Who are these students?

I've taught in a variety of situations in my musical teaching career.  A teacher learns something new from every group of students that they teach.  Beyond the curriculum that is to be dealt with, the students teach the teacher, especially about social and economic realities of a particular locale.

My first assignment was in southern Oregon in a suburban-rural setting.  The students in that school were considerably different from the environment that I had experienced where I lived in Ashland, Oregon.  Ashland, at that time, had 85% of its adult population college graduates.  That was a different situation from the surrounding cities and towns.

From this teaching situation I moved to Guam in 1990 and found myself in the southern part of the island.  Even on this little tropical island there were differences the student personalities due to sociology-economic differences.  The southern part of the island was quite rural and surprised me and other statesiders because people rarely left their villages.  In fact on a field trip that first year on Guam, although only 5 miles away from the more urban settings of mid-island left most of my choir students little lost as to how to act properly because they had never really been there before.

                                                                           
In 1994 I got a new job on Guam.  I became the music teacher of an elite school whose makeup was quite different than the school in the southern part of the island.  This school was primarily made up of students of upper middle to upper income business people.  The ethnic makeup of this school was also quite different.  Many Koreans, Japanese, Chinese, as well as some US mainland Caucasians and Filipinos made up the student population.  I was to learn the ins and outs of dealing with students whose parent language might not be English.  I would also use patience beyond what I'd dealt with in the past because of communication differences.

                                                                        
Now when I arrived in Suzhou, the students were sons and daughters of people who worked in SIP.   Suzhou Industrial Park

These parents were the factory executives of companies like Bosch, Samsung, Gucci, etc, etc, etc.  The working stays of these parents could be a two year stint, or longer depending upon the parent company and the benefits that they might receive while working in China.  The children knew that they were in Suzhou for a limited time and of course that affected their thinking.  Added to that was the parallel thinking of the administration and faculty.

                                                                         
Something that I found very unusual at SSIS was the department established in the elementary wing by the German corporation Bosch.  This was a German department who had its own German teaching staff and separate German curriculum.  I had these Deutsche kinder twice a week, two combination classes, and I had found myself using my high school German for the first time in my teaching career.  These children really appreciated the fact that I was of German descent and they liked hearing my family's history of coming to the United States from Germany in the 19th century.

It took a bit of time for me to understand and incorporate the PYP methodology, but I finally began to see that these students were thoroughly indoctrinated in this style of teaching and responded  easily to its methods and they were used to all the teachers tying their knowledge together and making a cohesion that wouldn't have occurred in other methodologies.  So, I was beginning to see the advantage of this overall method to educate with a consistency that I'd never seen before.

One thing that could be said for this school and other international schools is the way discipline occurs.  For one thing the ability to go to another school is very limited.  So, if there is ever a discipline problem with any student, parents really do enter into the discussion to straighten the child or they will find themselves without a school at all for their child to attend. That has its definite advantage over other situations where I'd taught.

I was now beginning to assimilate into this new school and its curriculum.  A good year was ahead of me.