Moving along...

My classes yesterday seemed to go very well. My polychrome class is down pretty solid- it helped to have done it twice at Pennsic. My monochrome class was a little bit rougher, but I think I communicated successfully what I wanted to, which is that that is a whole world of uncounted blackwork out there that should be explored, especially for the Elizabethan time period.

Moving ahead, I think I'm going to be working on two more classes: The first will be "Elizabethan Embroidery Emblems Explained". While driving to the site yesterday, I was reflecting on how the contextual Elizabethan understanding of motifs is missing from my knowledge- I know that these motifs meant something to their audience, in part due to their shared socialization, but I don't know what that is. For example, we (mostly) understand what "he's an ant, I'm a grasshopper" means. So using an image of an ant or a grasshopper would have meaning for ourselves and our audience. The Elizabethans had a similar and similarly complex language of symbols and metaphors, and I need to research that, and assimilate it into my schema, as best I can. (I'm suddenly reminded of a Star Trek episode and a culture that only dealt in metaphors.) This will absolutely help my understanding of the embroidery in it's time and place in history.

The other class I'm considering is "How to Share Your Joy: Tips for Teaching an SCA audience". My husband and I were discussing some of the classes we took at East Kingdom University yesterday. And he remarked that I should consider teaching a class for teachers- I'm an educator by trade, having done informal museum education while an undergrad, and then teaching formally in public schools over the past decade. My recent graduate school experience has trained me to be a facilitator for adult educators- a "teacher of teachers". So I think that class may be worthwhile as well. It's not an attempt to criticize- we have many, many knowledgeable people in the SCA. But not everyone is trained to think about HOW they are communicating and interpreting for their audience. Something as simple as "Know what your objective is. Know what you want students to understand when they walk out the door", could really help people create strong lessons that leave everyone with a positive feeling about the interaction.