Know What You REALLY Know

This week I am teaching a calligraphy class at the John C. Campbell Folk School, In Brasstown, North Carolina. We are spending our time together learning calligraphy basics, tool use, layout design, and will finish the week by creating a final piece of calligraphic art. I used this quote from Abigail Adams in our first layout exercise:

Learning is not attained by chance;
 it must be sought for with ardor 
and attended with diligence. 
- Abigail Adams 1818

Tomorrow morning I will share with the group this final piece I created from our group exercise.

My goal is to instill the joy and love of lettering in these eager learners. Yes, I love helping them ‘see’ how letters are created by hand AND how they can make beautiful words. And YES!!! watching their eyes go wide when their hand does what their head is trying to make it do. All of that is absolutely amazing! Yet the best part of teaching is how much I learn in the process. I often forget how far I have come in almost forty years of doing calligraphy…and gulp! can it have been almost forty years???? WOW, time flies when you’re having fun!

Speaking of time flying, and changing. The word choices of Abigail Adams greatly reflect the language used more than two hundred years ago. We had a great discussion in class about the words ARDOR and SOUGHT FOR. It sparked a suggestion about changing the quote to more modern language, and I brought up the of the impact of altering words other people are famous for saying. ALL of this is exactly what we should be talking about in a class geared towards words, quotes and calligraphy. I love it when the students hit every topic purely due to their ardor and the knowledge they sought for. (See what I did there?)

And again, after that lively discussion, I am reminded of how much experience I have to share. We forget what we know until someone asks the right question and BAM! all our knowledge and experience comes pouring out! There are four more days left in class, and I have no doubt that I will learn as much from them as they learn for me.

Want to know if you really know and love a topic? Take the time to teach it to someone else. In the process of teaching – preparing, planning, organizing and then executing in the classroom – THAT is when you will know what you really know.