In message <[email protected]>, Beth Marshall
<[email protected]> writes
And a sprinkling of more experienced lacemakers in the class can
sometimes help the "newbies" with minor problems/questions so they don't spend
too much precious class time waiting for the teacher (who, however good she
is, still has only one pair of hands and eyes and can't sort out 5 or 6
people's different needs simultaneously).
That can work two ways, though. A couple of weeks ago, with a newish
student coming to the end of a bookmark, I'd asked her to stop when she
reached a certain point so that I could show her how to finish it.
Having been way-laid with someone else (as you do) one of the others had
told her what to do (a standard tassel, which she had done before) and
she had gone ahead instead of stopping. Fine, except that that wasn't
how I intended her to proceed! Fortunately she had chosen to do another
bookmark for her next project, so last week she did the other type of
tassel (where you wrap the workers in a figure of eight round two
bundles of ends rather than just wrapping round the whole bundle).
Unfortunately she is one who will listen to what you say, and then
promptly forget/ignore it.
Mind you, teaching lace must be one of the most difficult jobs going - pupils
with different starting levels, different likes/interests and different
learning speeds means each pupil has to be given individual attention/tuition
I don't find it difficult working like this - if anything, it is more
interesting - especially when they don't warn you what they are going to
turn up with next... at lace fair times, I've learned to go and see what
new patterns Jenny Hester (a favourite designer of half of my mob) has
come up with, just in case! Jan Gardiner's bangles are proving quite
popular with a couple of the class, as well.
The advantage must be that you have to treat all students as
individuals, rather than just another face in the class - such as the
days of physical education at school, when coming to the time when she
had to write something on our end of year reports, one teacher got us to
stand up in turn and say something because she taught us dance "as a
class" and didn't know us by name - only by face!
--
Jane Partridge
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