teaching...

great teachers are hard to come by. i've had few in my life. a great teacher means different things things to different people. i know that the few i've had my classmates didn't always agree with me about.

the ones that have made true impressions on me have allowed me to be who i am and do what i do with minimal direction or help. i think the lack of direction or help does not hinder me. those that have pointed me towards a very precise place or feel they should carry a student through the learning process tend to do more damage then good. you learn by experience. by doing things wrong, then right. and if you are an intelligent individual you can do much of the work on your own. only when someone with more expertise is required, like someone literate when learning how to read or someone with years of design experience when you are first starting out, is the direction or help useful. especially in the design field is it helpful for the student to take their own path. so they can learn what instincts to listen to and others to avoid. if a designer is constantly directed towards which path they can take and what works especially for that teacher, their work may not turn out as desired. and they learn little about their own work and style.

i was directed towards this topic after sorting through old files of my work from undergraduate. whenever i think of my time at pratt, i never think very positively of my design class experiences. i always enjoyed my electives in the interior design department more than my actual core class. except one semester. i was taught by this lovely eccentric. every project i did in that class i loved, and still love. i remember fully grasping the concepts behind each project and really working to my fullest to create the ideal in my head. i never worked so hard in a class. i spent hours upon hours in the studio. i'd come home from the bar to leave again for studio. i spent much of my spring break and my birthday working on a model for the class. and i don't regret one moment of it. (except not having time to photograph my last project in all its glory.) i think i got more out of that one semester than i did out of the other five together.

all of this because of my teacher. she listened and questioned and let us go our way. she let us figure it out. she let us do as much as we could do. she never asked for too much. she never doubted us. she gave us direction, when we asked for it. she gave suggestions but wasn't offended when we decided against them. she was just amazing.

as i said before, not everyone agrees about someone being a great teacher. about half the class were too distracted by eccentricities to really see what she was offering us - a chance to be ourselves. she did not return the next semester. i think the department is missing out. some nice students in mississippi now get the best design professor i ever had.