Teacher Helps His Student Overcome Stuttering and Read Poetry, Using the Sound of Music

Musharaf Asghar, a stu­dent at Thorn­hill Acad­e­my in north­east Eng­land, over­came an acute stam­mer when his teacher, Matthew Bur­ton, bor­rowed an idea from The King’s Speech. The teacher asked his stu­dent to put on some head­phones play­ing the music of Ben Howard, and to start recit­ing a poem called ‘The Moment.’ Sud­den­ly, for the first time, the words began to flow. All of this was cap­tured in a doc­u­men­tary series, Edu­cat­ing York­shire, that aired on the BBC. The seg­ment above con­cludes with Mushy, as he’s known, giv­ing a short talk in front of his class, at what looks like a grad­u­a­tion cer­e­mo­ny. It did­n’t take long for his fel­low stu­dents to break down in tears.

Writ­ing recent­ly in The Guardian, the stu­dent recalls. “My nerves over speak­ing in assem­bly were TERRIBLE though. I did­n’t realise how big 200 peo­ple looks like. I was sweat­ing and I had a lit­tle wob­ble but even­tu­al­ly, I man­aged to get through it. I was excit­ed, if ner­vous, about the whole thing going out. But I’m real­ly hap­py and proud to be on tel­ly as I hope it gives oth­er peo­ple with a stam­mer the con­fi­dence to have a go at pub­lic speak­ing. My speech is get­ting bet­ter every week. Every­one at col­lege gives me time, but I’m get­ting quick­er any­way so they don’t miss their bus while they are lis­ten­ing to me. I still won’t be apply­ing for any call-cen­tre jobs yet though.” Find more infor­ma­tion on how music ther­a­py can help peo­ple over­come stut­ter­ing here.

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via @courosa