Thursday 4/6/17 and Friday 4/7/17, Spectrum Artworks, Open Studio Hours 1-4pm and Collective Studio Hours 1-3pm(+ clean up until 3.30pm) - 5.5 hours
This week was, well of course really busy again, but most of all it was incredibly exciting: I taught my first lesson by myself! Though it was hardly just by myself, since I had 4 assistants (Iris, Taylor, Jes and Lynda), but it was super exciting nonetheless.
In the beginning of the week I was very busy with all my homework, so I was a bit worried if I would have enough time to prepare for the lesson. I was able to practice my presentation a few times with friends, but the other things weren't as easy to prepare for, since after the presentation the class was going to continue in a more spontaneous manner with the students working on their comics.
When the day of the teaching came (which was Thursday by the way), I was very nervous, sleep-deprived and hungry (since I had just started my diet). I drank a lot of coffee to make sure people wouldn't notice how tired I was. When I arrived at Spectrum at 1pm, the welcoming and warm atmosphere once again soothed my mind, and I suddenly didn't feel as nervous anymore. Jes wasn't there at first, so I just spent time walking around and talking to everyone. Many of the people there seemed very excited about my upcoming lesson, and that scared me a bit. I once again wondered if I could live up to their high expectations.
After Jes arrived, we started gathering the supplies for my class that she had promised to provide (pencils, sharpeners, erasers, rulers and etc.). When we had everything, we headed upstairs to the Lighthouse's training room, which was were my lesson was going to be held. We had to wait a bit, since it was occupied by a meditation group at first, and when we got in, it was about 2.30pm (half an hour to my lesson).
I had been to the training room once before, but somehow it felt bigger this time. Maybe it was just the nervousness and excitement that I had bubbling inside me. We noticed that there were some relaxing nature sounds playing in the background, probably forgotten from the meditation session. They were so nice that we just decided to leave them on for my lesson as well. We then proceeded to rearrange the tables, I quickly learned how to use the room's strange computer and soon it was time for my lesson to start. People started walking in, and in the end a total of nine participants had arrived, which I think was pretty good considering that ten people originally signed up. Even Lynda arrived right on time, though she had said she would be very late.
We weren't allowed to take pictures of the students, to protect their privacy, but here is a picture of me instead.
When I started my class with the presentation, I was surprised by how smoothly everything went. Speaking in front of the students didn't feel intimidating at all, it was the opposite, the situation felt completely natural and comfortable. Of course I was speaking about something that I was incredibly passionate about, so that helped, but still I was amazed by how much fun it all was.
When I got to the end of the presentation, the students proceeded to work on their comic characters and then later on the comics themselves. Me and the assistants walked around giving the students advice and words of encouragement. Everyone's work was really beautiful, but that was of course to be expected, since they all had artistic backgrounds. I was also glad to see that many of the students had taken this opportunity to tackle some very personal subjects, while others took more distant approaches. Overall it was great to see that the students understood that this was a project where everyone could do their thing and not worry too much.
A really fun comic by one of the students!
A humorous take on a serious subject, by one of the students.
When the class ended, I was surprised to notice how much my throat hurt from all the yelling. I also wasn't expecting that I would have to even yell, but when people get excited about something they often get loud, even if they are adults. So whenever it got loud like that, I had to yell in order for people to hear what I said. All in all, I felt very happy about having taught a class for the first time, and fairly successfully too.
After cleaning up, me, Iris, Jes and Lynda stayed at the training room to talk for awhile, and then Lynda offered to drive me and Iris back to MCAD. We gladly accepted the offer.
On Friday I went to Spectrum again, but awkwardly forgot that I had to be there at 11am and not 1pm, because of some schedule changes... Fortunately Jes was once again really cool about it, and let me help out with whatever I could. It was a very quiet day, and I ended up mostly just cutting more pieces out from magazines for the art journaling class again.
Anyways, a very long entry again. Congrats to whoever read through it all. Next weeks entry probably won't be that special, but I guess we'll have to wait and see! Until then my readers!