Linda I can talk about workshops and classes both from the perspective of taking them, as well as teaching them.
I think of a workshop as a short term intense concentration on some specific type of bobbin lace. Homework and preparation are both matters for teachers as well as students. Students MUST come to the workshop with bobbins wound and pattern pricked, or a lot of valuable costly time will be wasted. A serious and committed teacher gets very frustrated when students start winding bobbins in class because the teacher knows that that student will not learn very much. But the teacher has an obligation to make sure the prospective students get copies of the patterns well enough in advance, with thread information, so that they CAN come to class prepared. If a class occurs Saturday and Sunday for 6 hours each day, one cannot expect students to do homework in between, although many do try to get as far as they can. When I TAKE a class, I spend the evenings writing up everything I learned that day in class, including diagrams explaining each new technique. I have learned that if I don't do this, I forget everything a week later. And I HATE being such a dummy that I lose all that information I paid for. So I make sure I don't. As to finishing a project -- a teacher has an obligation to aim the class level at a place where she can reasonably expect students to be. When I design a pattern for a workshop or class, I try very hard to put all the new hard stuff in the first hour and a half of the class. That way everyone, even the slower lacemakers, will get to it before the three hour session is over. If the students learn all the new stuff in the first hour, then they can go home and make the rest of the piece on their own at home, without my help. I deliberately design the pieces so that this can happen. I do expect students who come for a weekly class to do homework in between. But I expect this because I also hate to see students wasting their money on a class they don't learn from. In my experience new techniques must be repeated several times just after a student first learns them for the method to burn into the brain and remain accessible for the future. I tell my students that they should spend at least one hour making the lace on the day immediately after the class, and to be sure not to miss this day. Or they will forget, I've seen it happen too many times. And then during the week they should finish the 6 inch strip, or the tape bookmark. Four to six hours of work should finish the class learning piece. Then next week, I teach them something new, so they are always progressing. I want the students to be able to dispense with the teacher, to learn how to solve problems themselves. Making sure they hear about all the possible solutions allowed in the type of lace they are learning is the way to do that. If a student wants to come primarily for social reasons, I would hope that she would like to work on a simple pattern which is easy for her and make a completed project, taking as many weeks as she needs to finish it. With a simple pattern she can visit and chat and still be making lace, as the more serious committed students want to do. But getting together with lace friends just to make lace together might be a better way to socialize over lacemaking than taking a class. Even if it happens only once or twice a month. Some individuals will want to do both and may have the time. Lorelei - To unsubscribe send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] containing the line: unsubscribe lace [EMAIL PROTECTED] For help, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
