The knitting highlight of the last 2 weeks has certainly been my very first attempt at teaching a knitting lesson. I proposed teaching a lesson on Knit Graffiti a few weeks ago, hoping I could save it for a time when I had a few days with my students. Well, that didn't happen. My professor pushed me into teaching it on a pre-clinical teaching trial. Pre-clinical trials are less like classes and more like guerilla warfare. You get NO information ahead of time about what school you will be at, what age the students will be, what skill levels you will be working with, if they speak english, how many students you will have, what materials will be provided, etc. You get NOTHING ahead of time (my classmates have been stuck with blind students, non-english speakers, extreme cognitive disorder, illiterate 5th graders, the works, all with no time to prepare). You go in, you get roughly 40 minutes to meet your students, teach them, make a project with them, and leave, being evaluated all along by a hovering professor. Well, I got sent to Wells High School in the Ukrainian village (which, by the way, is not ukranian at all). I was greeted by metal detectors and armed police men. wow. I got to my classroom and gave my lesson to small groups of students (8 at a time). I knew I could not teach them to knit, this was really about seeing how receptive high school students would be to learning to knit. The bad news... none of them learned to knit (as was expected). The good news... all of my students all day long were interested and actively trying to learn to knit despite their failures for the entire 40 minute lesson. Take your victories where they come.
