My first teaching experience 1/2 (Group presentation and embroidery)

Hello, my dear readers 💓

As some of you already know I study at university (college) now. My major is Czech language and art teacher and I´m currently in my last year (if I will be successful will all my exams, I will be a bachelor in pedagogy next Autumn).

I never really liked the idea of becoming a teacher (I can´t imagine myself working with kids because they scare me, I´m not good at talking in front of people and other things...), but it was the only reasonable option for me. 😃

Art is my passion, so I wanted my degree to do something with it but to just study "Art (and Design/Photography or something like that)" was too intimidating because you need to be really good already... and well 😅 I wasn´t good enough, so I applied for pedagogy (in art and language) instead.

Now let´s get to the teaching experience because that´s the title of this article after all and you probably clicked on this article because of it. haha

Group presentation

My task to pass one of my art classes was
1. To create a Powerpoint presentation about a certain theme (theoretical part)

2. To come up with an art activity based on the theme and to try the activity with my classmates instead of actual kids in a class (pedagogy part).

That is good, I like that... but the problem is that it was a group project. 😕 So I had to do this with my two female classmates.

I hate group projects! I´m always the only one who does everything because I hate to wait and I hate to rely on other people to pass the class. I´d rather just do it alone. 😂

Anyway, the presentation happened last Monday. Our (mine, haha) presentation was a success. My two classmates are actually really good at talking in front of people, so even though I knew everything about our theme and they didn´t they talked like professionals. 😃

Theme: Embroidery

The main subject of the class is "classic (art/diy) techniques" and our main presentation and art activity theme was embroidery. Other classmates have themes like fabric dyeing, paper-making, ceramics etc.

In the presentation, we talked about the technique itself, its history, today´s trends and about what´s the difference between hand embroidery and sewing machine.

After this, our classmates could try some classic embroidery stitches. We were available the whole time to assist as the lecturers for the day.

This part was easy because embroidery is easy - you just need a needle, thread and some fabric. Our classmates did well because they all had some experience with embroidery already, so they didn´t really require our help.

Classic embroidery is not enough!

To make it clear to you: the main goal of the class was to elevate the embroidery technique, make it more interesting, to show kids that you can do many creative things with all kinds of techniques and it doesn´t need to be boring.

This is basically what our professors are teaching us in college on pedagogy - to make art classes in primary school or high school more meaningful and interesting for kids. That´s amazing! Don´t you think? This way the art classes won´t be boring anymore!

So every group needed to come up with a way to elevate the technique they chose (embroidery in our case).

After this little embroidery exercise, our presentation continued... Each person chose 2 contemporary artists using embroidery or yarn in their art practice and introduce the artists.

This was my opportunity to shine! and you can say that I did shine haha. My two chosen artists were a success - my classmates were amazed by the artist´s works and they complimented me on my choice. 😊

I will tell you about the artists later. It´s important for you to understand why I chose them and how it helped my classmates in another art activity.

So - what you will find in the next part of this article? Information about 2 contemporary artists, explanation and also pictures from 2 art activities and most importantly what I learned from this teaching experience. 😅

It's going to be interesting, I promise. Hihi.

(You will be given a chance to glance into a mind of a teacher! You will know what pedagogy is like. Haha.)

My dearest sponsors ❤️ Thank you for still supporting me!

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If you want to find out what we did next, if you want to discover some art and to see how real, modern art classes should look like, stay tuned for the second part of this article. 😊 I will post it soon. 💖

Did you ever tried embroidery or any other technique like this in your free time? Or did you tried it in school? How did your art classes look like? 😃

Take care. 💗