This summer some of my students showed their work at the Hanover Park Village Hall & I was asked to write a bit about myself for the exhibit program. It was the first time in ages that I took a moment to quantify how long I’ve been an art instructor. The answer – 18 years – amazed me. But then I quickly thought that I’ve actually been teaching a lot longer than that, for in each of my management jobs, I was teaching somebody something more days than not.
How has it happened that I’ve spent so much of my life engaged in teaching? Well, who knows… But I do know that my teaching style has been influenced by the great teachers I’ve had in my life. And one of the very best was my mother.
What made her such a great teacher? She was patient, yes; that is obviously an important quality in a teacher. But mostly it was because she broke the lesson down into simple, logical steps. For instance, I remember when she taught my brother Paul & me to bake chocolate chip cookies. She told us to get the eggs & butter out of the fridge well beforehand. Then we ground & measured the nuts & set them aside. The cookie sheets were greased before the mixer ever went on. Once we started combining ingredients, everything flowed smoothly: No dashing about looking for the salt or the baking soda; no frustrating attempt to cream sugar with stone-cold butter.
Decades later, I was in a chef’s training program & learned that what my mother taught us that day has a French name: mise en place. It roughly means “everything in its place.” I can guarantee you, Mom didn’t know that French term, but she did know something vitally important about teaching (& cooking!): Insure – or at least, maximize – the possibility of success for your student.
No, painting is not like baking cookies. In fact, I often tell my students, ”We’re not baking cookies here; we don’t have a recipe to tell us what to do next” when they’re struggling with a particularly difficult passage in a particularly recalcitrant painting. But – And this is a big but: There are things that I can do as a teacher – & that you can do as an artist – to smooth the way, to facilitate success. And it is my intention to share those things with you in future blogs.