Once upon a time I think I must have been a good teacher….. These are thoughts from three years ago, when I was helping to pay my bills by sharing knowledge with eager students. Distant days, I’m afraid… I can almost remember what teaching was like.
I just finished teaching a course at the community arts center that was hugely ambitious but probably not as immediately useful to the students as I had hoped. My plan was that the ‘advanced/intermediate’ potters who signed up for the class would all work on finding some coherent aesthetic direction in a run of pots. Where I teach the classes mostly focus on specific techniques, specific types of forms, specific functional issues, but almost never on aesthetic considerations. So this class was my attempt to get students to start figuring out what kinds of things they liked about specific pots (or pots in general) and to see how those ideas could translate across a variety of shapes and forms.
I realized that the first day of class I would need to expose them to what other potters do that serves as an exploration of particular ideas and interests. For instance…
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CARTER GILLIES POTTERY 
wonderful article about teaching, carter. much food for deeper considerations here. thank you for writing so distinctly about the things that mean much to you!