Who Learns What How

When I was a kid, there was a series of books, the publisher of which did something right, since they are branded in my mind: "Ladybird Books". They had a career series, one about what doctors do, and firemen (yes, firemen, not firefighters - this was the sixties) and teachers and nurses and engineers and receptionists and computer scientists, and even though I'm willing to bet money that the computer scientists book depicted men in white lab coats in a sterile room filled with large boxes with banks of flashing lights and reel-to-reel tapes, something must have spoken to me, because at age nine I wanted to be a computer scientist, even though realistically I had no clue what I was thinking.

As it turns out, it wasn't the worst thing I could have chosen, since some of the skills needed are pretty congruent with the way my mind works, which is also what makes me a quick study in any field in which you need simultaneously to be able to see the big picture and all sub-components and how they relate to each other and to the greater whole, and so on until you have a bead, a knit stitch, a pinch-and-pull, a switch statement. 

You also need a good sense of perturbations: if I change the way I pass through these beads, it'll make those beads lie that way, which will cause the corner to curl like this, and the other side to flatten out, and then I'll have an igloo. Or something.

You also need good navigational skills: I just did a knit two together followed by a yarn over and a purl three, which means I'm part-way through row four of an eight-row repeat and look! I made a mistake two rows down because that stitch is leaning to the left instead of to the right, but if I undo these three stitches down two rows, I can fix them this way and then continue with row four. Oh yes, good problem-solving skills too, although ultimately you can always toss or undo what's bad and start again, so perhaps problem-recognition skills is what's essential.

And oh yeah - run-on sentences. Not really, but you'd think, wouldn't you?

Which brings me to teaching beading, which has been quite wonderful these past couple of days.

I've been teaching beading for about four years now, I think, and of course I've had the full spectrum of students: those who have never threaded a beading needle to those who are off and running as you're telling the rest of the class about conditioning their thread. There are also those who pay absolutely no attention to the written and illustrated instructions, hanging onto your every word, to those who pretty much ignore you most of the time, speeding on ahead, inhaling the pages like oxygen. I used to feel slightly guilty about these over-achievers, wondering how I was giving them value, until I realised that their motivation for taking classes was often a more complex melange of personal details than simply wanting to learn a new stitch.

Two years ago, when I taught at Bead Fest Philadelphia which was that year held at a rather grody facility in Readding, I came across a whole nother type of person, which proved incredibly challenging.

I had a class of people who could not see patterns, who could not recognise a repetitive element and abstract out the commonality, and the more I'd say "See that cube bead there? See the one diagonally to its right? What bead do you think you should add to the right of that second cube bead?" the more they'd look at me as though I'd asked them for the formula for acetomenophin or perhaps even table salt or water, though that's probably unkind.

I came across a whole group of people who don't see large things in terms of the smaller things comprising them, and who don't see the way one stitch relates to the next, or how a diagonal repeat could possibly happen without fully specifying every contraction of every muscle in their hand (and seriously, while I know I can be wordy, I don't write forty-page instructions for a bracelet that requires two hours of effort), and it was humbling and trying and frustrating and although I have managed to help people understand in areas where they haven't before (as an undergraduate I tutored two girls in mathematics such that they went from failing to not only passing, but passing quite well), I'm not sure I was able to do the same for some of these people. 

I do hope they managed to finish their bracelets, but I'm willing to bet that most of them did not, and I have to say that I do not feel good about that, but it's just not realistic to write an instruction for the placement of every one of the thousand or so beads in a single project, and yes I have stopped beating myself up about that class, but I do think about it from time to time.

What I have discovered is that teaching beading to a group of knitters or weavers or spinners (who generally knit or weave or crochet their handspun yarn) who have never seen a seed bead close-up is very often easier than teaching beading to someone who has completed a couple of simple seed-beaded items from start to finish under the watchful eye of an instructor. Even though there are weaving and spinning and knitting and crochet classes, there's very little that one can actually complete in such a class, so the reality is that most of the work is done alone, without help, which means that these weavers, spinners, knitters and crocheters are good at pattern recognition and sorting and problem-solving and abstraction, and beading is just another modality.

Every person in every class I taught on Friday and Saturday was a delight, no matter their skill level. They all walked out understanding what they were doing, how they made and fixed and then avoided their mistakes, and how to continue when I'm not there. I believe that they will all be able to finish their projects (though not all of them will, which is their choice and Not My Fault) and I'm pretty sure that some of them will come up with clever variations that will make me wish I'd thought of that.

I feel successful.

I didn't have any full classes, but I had enough in each class to break even overall, and the zoo that was Meet the Teachers more than made up for the class numbers.

The best part of the Meet the Teachers reception was that I had so many people approach me and tell me how many of my kits they've bought and loved, which is always news, good news, since after a kit leaves me, I have no idea of its fate most of the time. Occasionally I get a disgruntled email, and generally after a few back-and-forths the exchange finishes with an "Oh I get it! Thanks!", but I almost never get a gruntled "Gee, this worked out well for me" note, so this was very, very gratifying.

It's a relief to know that I have repeat customers, to know that I'm doing something right, and it's very flattering to ask if I'd like to travel to teach classes at guilds or bead stores.

Now to find the time.