Today Leaves on the Current and I traveled to Jefferson County WV where we attended the spring version of the Mountain Heritage Arts and Crafts Fair. We have been going now for 30 years, at least once a year. Some of the craftspeople we most admire no longer come to this fair, but there are others we see regularly - painter Jefferson Stokes, and scrimshaw and jewelry artist Cathy Guss. We own multiple pieces by both, we always stop and chat, and almost always buy something.
Each year we encounter new artists whose work impresses us, and entices us to purchase things.
Which got me thinking about craftsmanship and what it means.
Perhaps it is because I am the grandson of a tailor, because my father, his son, taught me to look for quality craftsmanship.
I suspect as I offer this series of thoughts, still developing, it will also connect with teaching.
Our house is full of items bought from craftsman. Our most precious dishes are in a handmade cabinet from a craftsman in Kearney WV we met at one of these fairs. We have photographs from several people, and calligraphy from Susan Loy. These are the kinds of pieces that are not unique - once the artist creates the model, multiple versions can be produced, but the original creations are unique. AS I LOOk over our mantle I see Susan Loy piece using the text from Ecclesiastes "to everything there is a season..." Behind me, on the wall behind the sofa on which I sit, are several paintings of country scenes. My wife often drinks her coffee or tea from a mug made by Winton and Rosa Eugene, one of at least half a dozen pieces we have bought from them over the years.
Today we bought a glass-blown bird. We bought several pens made from unique wood - one with wood from the Wye Oak, another with wood recovered from a bog in England that may well be several thousand years old.
We love unique pieces like these.
We value the care and craftsmanship that goes into creating them.
We love supporting independent crafts people.
As the child of a tailor, my father taught me to look for craftsmanship in everything - if buying a suit he would turn it inside out to look at the seaming. If buying a chest of drawers he would pull out the drawers to see how they were put together, how they slide, and he would look at the back of the piece to see if it were real wood or merely plywood backing (which he abhorred).
My father became a very creative cook. I learned from him, starting as a child. We appreciate food which is well prepared and well-presented.
We appreciate the care that goes into craft.
Some pieces of craftwork are in fact great works of art. But they do not have to be of museum quality to be worthy of our attention.
I am a teacher.
I never know how class is going to go. Even towards the end of the year, by which time I know my students very well, I still cannot be sure of what the reactions will be to what I plan to do in a class, and what happens will be as much their responsibility as it is mine.
As a teacher I am something of a craftsman, but I do not have complete control over my material the way a fine potter might.
I have played at craft. I do cook. I was at one point a very good photographer, in the days when we still used film or created slides directly.
I view much of my writing as a form of craft - and like teaching, I do not completely control what happens, because it involves the reactions of others.
So does the piece of pottery, or of literary calligraphy, or of handcrafted furniture. The person from whom we purchase it surrenders it to us, and then how we use gives it a meaning perhaps beyond what s/he imagined.
Those of us who write here experience that phenomenon as well - we never know where our words will go (whether or not the NSA may be paying attention) and what impact they may have.
As a teacher, I am reminded often of both the positive and the negative implications of the famous statement by Henry Adams, A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.
I spent 20 years of my life working with computers for a living. I was quite good at many aspects - systems analysis, debugging failed programs, writing effective coding. There is SOME craft in that, but we tended to seek a precision that is different than that of the crafts person or the artist.
When i first applied to Johns Hopkins to become a teacher, the dean of the education program Ralph Fessler did not want to admit me, in part because when he met me I had just come from my job of working with computers, and the way I talked and related seemed to him contradictory to what a teacher must do, which is adjust to the students before him. Linda Poole saw something in me, and on her say-so I was admitted to the program. She left Hopkins a number of years ago, and for a while was the head of the English department in the school in which I will be teaching next year, although she left a few years ago to become the supervisor of Secondary English for the school system. One thing I learned under her mentorship while at Hopkins was the importance of paying attention to what students say and do. When she observed a lesson I did in the debriefing afterward she pointed at a number of things students said and did that I had totally missed.
Michalangelo one said “In every block of marble I see a statue as plain as though it stood before me, shaped and perfect in attitude and action. I have only to hew away the rough walls that imprison the lovely apparition to reveal it to the other eyes as mine see it.”
There are elements of that in teaching, but it is not quite the same, because as a teacher we can see possibilities but we are not the only sculptor - the students are both the marble and co-sculptors with us of what they may become.
I wonder if our society might be far healthier were we to think a bit less of engineering and technology as the answers to ALL topic and remember the importance of arts and crafts.
I wonder how much happier people might be if they spent time trying their own hands at simple crafts, and found the joy possible therefrom.
As a teacher I know that when I empower my students to explore different ways of demonstrating their learning and understanding, that is when the most powerful learning usually occurs. Yet too often they are afraid to take the risk of trying and perhaps failing, not understanding that it is often only through such failure that one increases both understanding and skill.
I do not claim these thoughts are fully coherent, although I do think have some value beyond helping me sort out my own thinking.
When I was still in the classroom, the weekend would be when i would reflect, most often on a Saturday. Nowadays, at least for the summer, I am not in the classroom and on Saturday I spend around 10 hours working in a bookstore. That does give me time to reflect.
I have always tried to understand the world in which I find myself and my own experiences through writing. Beginning as a pre-teen I used to keep notebooks in which I jotted down observations and what I thought were insights. If I didn't have a notebook, or the one I had was filled, I might write on a napkin, or a paper place mat, or the back of an envelope. I recently found several folders of writing going back half a century, and perhaps before the summer passes i will clear some time to reread some of those as I from time to time reread what I have posted here. My experience of the latter is to be somewhat amazed that i was capable of offering such words. i remain, despite my 67 years and various awards as a teacher, a data processing professional, and other endeavors, insecure about the value I give to others.
It is perhaps most of all the experience of that insecurity, that self-doubt, that propels me to return to the classroom. Having carried that all my life, I understand how much a part of adolescence it is, even for our brightest and hardest working kids. I think that is part of what makes me an effective teacher, because I have never fully left behind the experience of my own adolescence.
As I prepare to reenter the classroom, this time I think I want to approach it somewhat differently.
This time I want to focus on being a craftsman.
This time I want to be sure that I never lose sight of my individual students.
I will share with them my love of craft - of writing, of pottery, of music, of poetry, of skill in politics.
And maybe, just maybe, I will be a bit better able to share what is the most important thing I bring to my teaching:
I love my students, and I will no longer be afraid of showing that.
Just a few disorganized thoughts on a Friday night.
Peace.