Old 11-06-2011, 05:43 PM
  #22  
thepolyparrot
Super Member
 
thepolyparrot's Avatar
 
Join Date: Nov 2010
Location: Mars
Posts: 2,549
Default

I'm sorry for your SIL. Send her here! It takes more than skill and a desire to pass it on to make a teacher. Even more than technical ability, it takes empathy, a positive attitude and a love for providing encouragement.

Students will eventually get the technical aspects of almost any skill - but beginners need encouragement even more than they need facts and technical details. Derision and tsk-tsk critiques may salve the ego of a teacher who needs that kind of reinforcement, but they do nothing for raising up students and giving them confidence.

If you're going to be a teacher and you want to make a living at it, plan to put the catty remarks and critiques away. Cultivate a positive attitude.

If a student comes away from your class with a less than perfect finished project but she likes it and she has lots of enthusiasm and courage to try it again, you have a convert.

If you have snippy-sniped your superior attitude at them, they may finish a class with perfect 1/4" seams and a very nice quilt that they absolutely hate. They may have also developed an intense dislike of anything quilt-related.
thepolyparrot is offline