reworking a class

i'm not sure if i mentioned it yet, but i am teaching a jewelry making class at the griffin school this quarter. i was asked to participate again in their art workshop and gladly accepted. so i decided to teach the students how to make these awesome beaded rings. last year i did the basic jewelry making class which was alright, but i think they really wanted something more.

so i obliged. i have been busy working on making the patterns so they are simple to follow with color coding and the whole nine yards. well, after the first class last week, i realized that i had bitten off a bit more than i could chew.

before i had "kits" prepared for each student with the correct amount of beads counted out with a color assigned to each one. what was i thinking? i was trying to organize the class so much i feel like i squeezed the creativity right out of it. so this week i'm reworking the patterns to simplify them a bit so that the students can make more than one ring per class and so that they can choose their own colors too.

i suppose i got caught up in the whole project that i lost sight of the bigger picture. so i took a breather for a few days and now am super excited about the new ideas and patterns that we are going to be doing. simplifying the class will take a load off of the students' mind allowing them to open up and really become creative.

so today & tomorrow i will be taking apart the "kits" i had so carefully prepared and i will take this as a huge lesson learned.