Teaching Workshops

By Sarah Swett

Oh, the joys of the tapestry workshop. Did I say joys? A slip of the fingers. I mean frustrations, irritations, revelations, and, well of course, the joys.

I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with teaching. The people that I meet and the places that I go are usually wonderful. The hours of preparation, airplane rides and days away from my loom and family are hard. On some trips I get great ideas. Others find me counting the seconds until it is over. It is interesting to be writing this as I begin a year away from teaching-- thinking about it instead of planning the number of chairs I’d like in my classroom next July.

Attempting to impart information to others requires a certain level of hubris -- at the very least an assumption that one knows things students need to hear. I often wonder how I can help people to learn technique when most of mine have been discovered through trial and error. Every day I learn how very much I don't know. While this keeps the process fresh, I have to laugh at the absurdity of imparting information to others when three days later I will surely change my mind. As some of my work is technically dicey, there is an endless balancing act between sharing every new idea and ensuring the students have a solid base on which to base experiments of their own. But of course, this is the point of a workshop--to help each person believe that they can figure things out for themself.

To that end, my ideal class consists of a group of students with specific, and sometimes contradictory goals, and a variety of skill levels. A conversation with one person can lead to discussions that interest others. This broadens the scope for all, myself included. Given workshops tend to be short (3 to 5 days), they feel successful if most of the participants take away one piece of information with which to enrich their own work. If they also hold on to a couple of other ideas, so much the better.

For those contemplating taking their ideas out into the world, here are a few specifics: