ABSTRACT
John's School' is a small school for 7-11-year-old pupils with behavioural, emotional and social difficulties. Almost all the children are boys and a significant minority have the sort of needs that are associated with mental health problems. John's teaching room is primarily an art room. Children's paintings are pinned to the walls and hang from the ceilings. Demonstration is an important teaching technique for John, partly because the boys he teaches tend to have a fairly limited understanding of language. John worked hard to engage each student from the moment he encountered him in the classroom, and he sustains this engagement all the way to the teaching room. The knowledge source for John's lessons is primarily the student and the rhythmic patterns that the student hears and copies, whilst playing along with the track. John's aims are about developing his students' practical drumming skills, rather than their knowledge about music, perhaps because John sees drumming as nonverbal.
