Dissecting the Process
It’s time to start looking over my class catalog and refresh handouts, rethink the way classes are packaged, and make changes if necessary. I plan to propose more to teach this coming year and I want to make sure I have the best product possible. 
One of my favorite parts of designing a class is the opportunity to dissect a particular process of knitting, carefully extracting the myriad hand, needle and yarn movements that make up even the most basic of knitting maneuvers. I enjoy observing myself (I record and photograph my own hands) working a technique and figuring out how to break it down into steps for a demonstration and the writing of a handout.
There’s an important balance to strike in teaching, because I don’t want it be so many instructions that it seems intimidating, but yet I want it to be accessible and give more information than just, “Here, watch me! It’s easy!”
The more I teach a technique, the more efficient my designed instructions become and I get better and better at expanding or contracting them depending on how I perceive the student is receiving them, or even as I take the measure of the whole class.
It’s a cool thing to feel that give and take and, as I’ve said before, there’s nothing better than that moment of increased confidence and fluency in a technique: The A-HA moment.
Originally Published in December, 2013
Tags: preparing to teach knitting, teaching knitting, teaching preparations
