Tiny WPA: Work from the known to the unknown

Teach me how to teach

I have never wanted to stand at the head of a classroom, pushing pencils and quizzes and reminding people to study for incoming stress tests. For someone who finds it challenging to remember facts and figures, or even to sit at a desk for one hour, that system has never worked for me. It only made me feel so defective, like I could never accomplish anything out there.

When I finally accumulated enough knowledge about woodworking, I decided to teach. The one class on “epistemology” I took in grad school did not prepare me for teaching real people. Designing a quiz about a table saw is not the most effective way to explain table saw use. There’s a better way to learn woodworking.

I started teaching before I came to Tiny WPA—a few workshops at craft schools, then my now-beloved college woodturning classes—all the while wildly making things up as I went….