Lessons

Lesson Info

Class Introduction

Hi, welcome to creative live everybody. My name is lily tongue crystal and I'll be your host for how to teach a craft class with ashley nichols. We have an amazing instructor for you. Actually is a teacher, a crafter and a quarter. She taught high school and medical middle school students for ten years and she was corrupt, surrounded by culture. She made her first nine patch when she was only eight years old. And by the time she was in high school, she start designing bags. How cool is that? Finally, when she's not teaching, ashley is running her own small handmade business called alphabet summer. Please welcome help me in welcoming ashleigh to the stage. Great. Thank you were so excited to have you here. A creative live. I'm so excited. Great! So you're going to be teaching a class about teaching a class? I'm not crazy. I know it's very meta. So I wanted to ask you what inspired you to become a teacher? Well, you know, as you said, I was teaching in schools for a long time and I've al...

ways been inspired being in learning environments and I've also always been a quilter and a crafter so it's a natural fit for me. Right great, great. Well, you have a lot to cover so let's get started and I'm going to go back to my feet right? Thanks. Thanks so like hi everybody to the in studio audience and everybody out there hello I'm so excited to be with you guys today we're going to start to really dive into this and ask you guys to work right away we're going to start with a visualisation okay, so I want everybody to think visualize a memorable experience that you had with the teacher or in a classroom and I'm wondering if anybody would be willing to share some adjectives or some words or even just describe that experience for me does anybody here I'm not calling you guys right away? Does anybody feel like they want to share? Kathy I had a commercial art teacher at the vocational school when I was in high school and I think the adjective would be around um a lot of independents and he always gave us independence to go off and kind of like it would have the lesson but then we go into our own thing if we were done early we'd get extra jobs we could take on on her own that's great so what about the word freedom? Yeah, he gave you a lot of freedom out of freed out freedom and independence that's great anyone else? My handwriting is beautiful today I'm thinking of a teacher I had back in junior high and I was very impressed by his enthusiasm great enthusiastic enthusiastic anybody else katie I had a high school to the future who was uh she was always treating us like we were actual people instead of kids so she's very relatable, very relatable that's a really good word. Yeah there's nothing worse than being in a classroom where like the teachers kind of talking down on you are you know, not treating you like an equal um relatable that's great. Anything else after um the first thing that popped in my head was a math teacher I have masks not my favorite subject but this teacher in high school try to make things make you make connections but like I'm rich remember the geometry class like making a mini golf course in the class yeah, making it relevant to you? Yeah, we're making things relative like making the connection between yeah. Okay. Um so I'm just gonna write relevant, um season my second grade teacher she's it was the best teacher she was really friendly. She was approachable. Uh huh. She allowed us a lot of freedom and independence. She was enthusiastic all the things that you have on the board that approachable I like that word tio great and then holly anything I think generally most of the teachers that they were really warm but they also they trusted me I had our photo retouching teacher and he gave me a project that he would dio and trusted me clickbait which I thought was really good yeah I love that one trusting because you want it we're going to talk about this in our class but you want to be able teo you know give your students the freedom and trust that things were going toe happened how they're gonna happen right not to have such like a control idea so I want us to think about this question right now what's keeping you from teaching maybe some of us do teach already and I know some of us in the audience are doing to some teaching right now but if you're not or if you're kind of hesitant around this idea of teaching what's keeping you from teaching anybody want to share susan not feeling ready mm great oh, no not feeling ready anyone else not feeling same but yeah, you want to have a little bit more confidence? Anybody else? I have some ideas here so a lot of people are concerned that it's hard to be an ineffective teacher perhaps um so much public speaking right? What do I teach right? We all have some of us have so many things that could potentially teach how do I decide what exactly I should teach on dh then where do I begin? Um, this is another important one that we're going to discuss is how do I know what my students need? And perhaps I'm an introvert. I don't think I would be a good teacher, which I believe is for false statement, and I'm gonna prove to you why that is but so there's a lot of things that are potentially keeping us from teaching, keeping us from being all of these things for our students. But I'm here to tell you I for one, I'm here to tell you that you are already a teacher, so I want you to think about this a true artist is not one who is inspired, but one who inspires others. Ok, so you guys would consider yourselves artists? I'm assuming yes, ok, so if you don't believe me, this is the definition of the word inspire inspire actually means to fill someone with the urge or ability to do or feel something especially to do something creative. Ok, so the word inspire actually means to get people to do or feel or create ok, which is exactly what artists do naturally. Ok, so I want you guys to think about yourselves already is teachers, because you're artists okay, now, why teach your craft? This is something that we we I mean, maybe this is the number one reason that you're in this course is to what is to figure out why I should do this, right? Well, I'm going to convince you, number one it's going to grow your business, it's going to inspire others, as we just said, and you are actually going to learn something yourself, okay? And in this class, we're just going to give you guys a little bit of a preview of what we're going to dio we're going tio talk about ways to find venues and teaching job, which is obviously a big part of this whole thing of teaching your craft. We're going to learn how to set clear, objective and give your students the best experience, right? You can teach a class, but you want to teach a class after that, right? You want to be able to give your students that good, good experience so that they want to come back, we're going to talk about different formats for classes, different structures, we're going to make an effective lesson plan. We're going to talk about ways to prepare your materials, there's a lot of elements that go into a successful class and getting your materials ready is one of them, especially for our classes, sometimes we have, like buckets full of materials. Or suitcases full of materials for our classes were also going to learn how to open up in foster communication with students just something I learned over those years of teaching middle schoolers we're going tio figure out ways to use teaching to grow our business again to be repetitive here we're going to talk about techniques for setting the tone and creating your own unique classroom we're going to talk about how to deal with situations that might arise and we're going to learn to embrace our personal style and approach to teaching because we all have one even if we wouldn't no it right you have your own unique way of doing any everything that you d'oh and that definitely applies to being a teacher who is this class for a while it's for any artist crafter crafter or maker at any career stage with any or no experience teaching okay, so everybody is going to get something out of this class and I'm going to show you how all types of artists makers, designers and crafters can be successful teachers I'm good and now a little bit about why I'm the one to teach this class well really kind of talked about this in the intro where I have I'm a teacher and I'm a crafter ok, so I've got those two things but specifically my story goes that I was you know, very creative growing up and my mom is a professional coulter um my aunt is a swell like I've been surrounded by quilters has really set and I've always that sort of always been my passion and then when I went to college I moved to spain and I spent most of my twenties living in spain and I became ah high school english literature teacher and I loved it I learned a lot of things taught lots of cool books, that kind of thing, and I decided I was like, ok, time for something different and I moved to san francisco and I became a middle school spanish teacher so kind of totally different full of totally different challenges, different experiences, but I could never quite shake this urge tio dedicate myself full time to my creative endeavors and then that's when I realized, well, I have I have to put these two things together and once I started teaching, crafting and sewing and quote specifically quilting um I figured it out that's when I was like, this is one of this is what I'm supposed to be doing ok, so that's my story I have eleven years of teaching experience um and not only that I have experienced teaching so many different things and so many different age groups that I feel like this is exactly the kind of thing that I want to pass along to you guys because for teaching crafts weaken there so many different types of classes we can teach and I'm hoping to give you guys a lot of information about all those different different types and then as lily mentioned also I have a small business called alphabet summer which the name in case you're wondering it's a little bit of a random name if you didn't know but I was I was a teacher so on my summer vacations I was like, what can I do to keep myself more creative? So I started a blawg where I did a project for every letter of the alphabet and I called it off about summer and I blogged about it and it was wonderful and and the archive is actually still on my website you can check it out and so it was my way of keeping myself creative over my summer holidays and the name stuck so it's my website is still off about summer dot com, my instagram and twitter and all my social media alphabet ashleigh so that's in case anybody was wondering that's where that came from and I kind of like it kind of keeps in the hole teacher teacher anything alphabet um so how are we going to get from here to our first class experience? Well, we're going to talk about how to find venues and I'm gonna ask you guys to find some venues for potential teaching banks were going tio look at different types of lessons so we're gonna focus on technique based projects are technique based classes and project based classes and you guys can decide according to your craft what kind of thing is more up your alley we're going to develop actual lesson plans we're going to get feedback on potential pitches for classes got some surprises for you in that department and we're going to learn some tricks for set up this is kind of my favorite part this is like the the teacher and me loves talking about student in class management and creating a positive class environment so we're goingto secretly called this crafty teacher training ok, this is all the stuff you get in teacher training and I'm just gonna pare it down for you hopes and then follow up and build relationships which obviously goes long so I wanted to point draw everybody's attention tio um the teacher's lounge that I've created and it's on my web site you can find it by going to my website alphabet summer dot com and there's a little tab called the teacher's lounge and you can click on there and join this virtual teacher's lounge that I've created so my hope is that we can all connect there sort of like a teacher's lounge like I remember the teacherslounge being a place where you would sit down, have a cup of coffee maybe talk about some difficult kids um and it was a safe space where you knew you could get advice, support and resource is and that's what I'm that's. What I would love this to become a cz. Well, for all of you out there, right, a place anywhere in the world, right? Even better. If you find somebody that's in your area and you guys can connect on different venues or in your same state or in your same country, even you guys could talk about different, you know, ways to promote your classes. So this is the place where you're going to find that. So I invite you guys all to go to the teacher's lounge.