Why I Teach
Whenever I develop a new technique or figure something out that enhances my artistic expression, my first thought is “This is so cool! I need to share this!” I think being itchy to share what I learn is the natural progression for my particular species of humanity. Perhaps you’re the same way. Welcome to the club. We are the teachers.
When I first started teaching jewelry-making techniques, I didn’t give much thought to why I teach, or its importance. That changed one day when, early in my jewelry teaching career, a student referred to a primitive and particularly soulful piece of mine that she had seen online. “I burst out crying when I saw it,” she told me.
My guess is that if the moment had been captured on film, you would see …show more content…
Up to then, I aimed to show students how to make what I make. I wanted them to have a good time and emerge from the class with a thorough understanding of how to master whatever technique I was teaching.
After that day, I wanted my students to understand that they have a unique voice, and it is beautiful. For some of them, that is how they speak to the world. It’s how they reach out to their tribe, saying hello, saying “Here is where I …show more content…
We laugh in my classes. I don’t encourage sobbing or deep sighing or moaning – that is best left for a self-help workshop. We mold clay and bend wire and pound metal and wrinkle our noses at the smell of liver of sulfur and figure stuff out and try out new things and celebrate epic fails with wild abandon. We share. We care. We compare. We create riddles as we try to wrestle what’s in our mind’s eye into an articulate vision and using wire or clay or paper or resin or myriad of other materials into a work of beauty that we just can’t stop looking at. Something that we just sort of sit with, in our hands or maybe on the table. I’ll pick up a piece of jewelry I’ve made – or someone else has made – and declare “I love this like I love a child.” And everyone giggles because they totally know where I’m coming from.
I am a detective, sifting through the chaos on a student’s tabletop. The half-completed piece brought from home. A picture torn from a catalog or magazine. The bits and bundles and flotsam and jetsam, seemingly without order, but pointing toward something.
Voice.
The Gifts I Am
Whenever I develop a new technique or figure something out that enhances my artistic expression, my first thought is “This is so cool! I need to share this!” I think being itchy to share what I learn is the natural progression for my particular species of humanity. Perhaps you’re the same way. Welcome to the club. We are the teachers.
When I first started teaching jewelry-making techniques, I didn’t give much thought to why I teach, or its importance. That changed one day when, early in my jewelry teaching career, a student referred to a primitive and particularly soulful piece of mine that she had seen online. “I burst out crying when I saw it,” she told me.
My guess is that if the moment had been captured on film, you would see …show more content…
Up to then, I aimed to show students how to make what I make. I wanted them to have a good time and emerge from the class with a thorough understanding of how to master whatever technique I was teaching.
After that day, I wanted my students to understand that they have a unique voice, and it is beautiful. For some of them, that is how they speak to the world. It’s how they reach out to their tribe, saying hello, saying “Here is where I …show more content…
We laugh in my classes. I don’t encourage sobbing or deep sighing or moaning – that is best left for a self-help workshop. We mold clay and bend wire and pound metal and wrinkle our noses at the smell of liver of sulfur and figure stuff out and try out new things and celebrate epic fails with wild abandon. We share. We care. We compare. We create riddles as we try to wrestle what’s in our mind’s eye into an articulate vision and using wire or clay or paper or resin or myriad of other materials into a work of beauty that we just can’t stop looking at. Something that we just sort of sit with, in our hands or maybe on the table. I’ll pick up a piece of jewelry I’ve made – or someone else has made – and declare “I love this like I love a child.” And everyone giggles because they totally know where I’m coming from.
I am a detective, sifting through the chaos on a student’s tabletop. The half-completed piece brought from home. A picture torn from a catalog or magazine. The bits and bundles and flotsam and jetsam, seemingly without order, but pointing toward something.
Voice.
The Gifts I Am