Beginner Lampworking Class Curriculum?

caliglassguy · #1 2013-01-22, 11:08pm

Ok if I were to give an actual paid class to someone for beginner lampworking skills with actual beads and such being taken home by the student what should the curriculum be for say, an 8 hour block of instruction? I mean do I show videos, obviously need to discuss safety/ how to properly light the torch and turn it off, shop set up and proper ventillation, beginning beads, stringers, how to pull stringers and use them for decoration, frit and its uses....just trying to come up with actual curriculum to fill a days class. Oh class could incorporate both boro and soft glass as I have both. I'm sure I may need to consider legal issues as well. Marble making, bead making, glass powders, enamels....many things to consider but for a beginner class not sure what to cover. It would be nice to have some sort of written curriculum outline to go by in case I stray too much....which I likely will lol. Any thoughts? Suggestions?

steiconi · #2 2013-01-23, 1:43am

Really beginners? ROUND BEADS--that should fill up 8 hours or more.

Seriously, keep it simple, focus just on beads; a little stringer, a little frit so they can decorate.

Offering soft glass AND boro would be too much, I think, as would marbles. I would keep it to basics and save enamels and fancy schmancy stuff for the next lesson.

Dragonharper · #3 2013-01-23, 4:32am

Keep it simple, beads or marbles or boro basics, pick one. Lots of practice/hands on time.

jhuels · #4 2013-01-23, 6:23am

I just taught my first beginner class last Sat. It was 6 hours. We worked with 104 glass and concentrated on round beads, covered gravity, played with dots and a little raking and filled our day. It was great!

Mr.Smeeth · #5 2013-01-23, 6:35am

How to make the bead ends even. pull stringers. dots. barrels. tweezers. mashers. cover basic tools. gravity beads how glass moves. raking. Placing simple murrini. She spent allot of time talking about the properties of glass annealing. insurance heating.

I think that summed up my first lesson and we exhausted our poor teacher with questions. Awesome teacher = Jodie McDougal

Nolly · #6 2013-01-23, 6:42am

John,

If you're going to teach, you need to sit down and figure this out for yourself. You need to do it because you need the exercise in planning, tool and supply assembly, and thought. It's part of the gig.

For my beginners' class, I thought back to the classes I've taken, and then to the basic skills that a person has to acquire to make a well-formed bead. There's a lot of repetition, so you have find ways to make the work entertaining while the students are honing their skills.

That's a start ... but I strongly encourage you to think back on your own experiences, trials and errors, and build on them for your students.

Nolly

SuzyQ · #7 2013-01-23, 9:23am

Well said Nolly.

This may help as well:

http://www.isgb.org/isgb-education1/...-teaching.html

losthelm · #8 2013-01-23, 10:15am

Start by outlining the coriculum, then find some friends intrested and run a test class.
It helps to have people with varying lampwork experiences.
This will help with feed bak on what you missed, what needs to be changes and what you can do to improve the class.

8 hours is a long stretch for a class if you can break it down or simply leave a majority of the time to pratice skills and techniques.
I would stick with the soft glass, your students that may buy equipment and materials will probibly start with a basic torch and glass. Boro might be more suited for a fallow up class.

allicat · #9 2013-01-23, 2:04pm

I work in a public school, and while our teachers are certainly expected to be able to teach, they are given a framework/curriculum to follow. Since there is no formal framework for teaching lampwork, I have no problem helping you brainstorm. Here's some suggestions:

~Definitely start off with safety.
~No videos; they are there to learn from YOU. Plus, if you show them really impressive work on the videos, some be frustrating cause they will not be able to do that. Others won't pay attention anyway cause they'll be discussing what they learned so far.
~Pick one thing: marbles, beads, whatever, and focus on that.
~Give them some time to simply melt glass before they get to make anything, so they can learn where to hold it in the flame, how to hold the rods, and for some, to get over the fear, etc. Maybe have them make a bit of frit, by giving each a small metal container of water as well.
~Give them your email/phone/some way to contact you afterwards, so if they have any questions they can ask.
~At least an hour for lunch. But don't make it mandatory; some folks will likely want to stay and practice. Do make sure you stay; those folks will have questions.

HTH
Alli

"some be frustrating"? Apparently I speak Ebonics. I meant: some may be frustrated.

Ed_Slawson · #10 2013-01-23, 2:05pm

The ISGB has a teaching curriculum listed someplace on their site. The url for it is: http://www.isgb.org/isgb-education1/...-teaching.html

allicat · #11 2013-01-23, 3:50pm

How cool is that; I had no idea. Bookmarked!

Alli

Lorraine Chandler · #12 2013-01-23, 7:22pm

[quote=Nolly;4220808]John,

If you're going to teach, you need to sit down and figure this out for yourself.

What?:-k

There is absolutely no reason why a person getting ready to teach a first class shouldn't come to LE for help and support....that's what we do here.

I agree with others that have taught, basics on safety, ventilation, pull stringers, make a few simple twisties and then TRY for round beads with smooth holes. Sometimes just keeping the glass on the mandrel is hard.

Good luck and most of all keep it fun.

28676bhe · #13 2013-01-23, 9:43pm

Looking back to the first class I took, I wish the instructor had made us use no more than 5 colors - black, ivory, etc. That way, I could have come home with beads that could have been used together, no matter how wonky!

Ditto to all the above! Round, round, round!

SuzyQ · #14 2013-01-24, 5:04am

[quote=Lorraine Chandler;4221561]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nolly

John,

If you're going to teach, you need to sit down and figure this out for yourself.

What?:-k

There is absolutely no reason why a person getting ready to teach a first class shouldn't come to LE for help and support....that's what we do here.

I agree with others that have taught, basics on safety, ventilation, pull stringers, make a few simple twisties and then TRY for round beads with smooth holes. Sometimes just keeping the glass on the mandrel is hard.

Good luck and most of all keep it fun.

I didn't read what Nolly said that way at all.

caliglassguy · #15 2013-01-24, 5:49am

Thank you all for the great input , suggestions and links It's great to be part of such a helpful community of people. The main reason behind asking is because I'm self taught so I have not had the opportunity to see firsthand what is covered in beginner classes and also to have an outline to refer to while teaching even if I do not follow it to the letter. Gotta run to work more thoughts later.

JetAge Studio · #16 2013-01-26, 2:04pm

First of all, it's great you're taking the teaching plunge John! That's awesome! Not a criticism, but I to tend to agree with Nolly, it will make you think about how you do the techniques you do and why/how you want to teach your beginning students. I did this when I first started teaching at our local glass school since there really was NO guideline from our former instructor, and I am like you, I need a bulleted syllabus to keep me on track, and I hand one out to my students to so they know what to expect from the class, and it also gives them something to write notes on.

The folks here have given great advice; really keep it simple. Students' heads will be swimming just after the first stringer pull! Really! Also, you should stick to only one type of glass to work with; either you're teaching a boro class, or a soft class. Your students will just be confused by the two, unless you split up your class into two days/sessions.

For each beginning class I teach, I assume my students do not have any experience working with glass, and need some vocabulary to start. Even if they have worked with glass before and they are just getting a refresher, I always do my classes the same way at the beginning. For the first half hour-45 mins, I go over the basic glass families and talk about why they are different from one another. Talk about coefficients, talk about the color pallets and pluses and minuses of working with boro & soft, just a quick over view; people don't really want a chemistry lesson. I don't go into ventilation, other than to say why it's so important for a home studio. You can work up a syllabus or intro to beadmaking handout that bullet points some safety considerations like ventilation, but that's all, don't go in depth unless they really have questions.

I'll then talk about the torches, eyeware, basic basic tools, common sense best working practices & how to use the striker. You'd be surprised how difficult it is for first timers to use them! First demo is how to turn on & off the torch. Let your students get familiar and comfortable with the flame, this is so important for them if they've never worked with a flame before. Talk about the mandrels & bead release. If I have a bead on a mandrel, I usually show them how to take the bead off so they understand what the realease is for first hand. Then there's annealing/kiln/holding temps, etc.

For me, I like to teach doing each demo technique, then have the students try it as I do it again with them. I also find it best for my students if I do the demos one by one, letting them try it out each time instead of me teaching a lot of different techniques all at once. They only remember the last technique you do if you do them in big chunks, you'll only end up having to explain again.

We used to do our beginning class in a 6 hour chunk of time in one day and found it was very tiring for the students, so this year we split the class into two 4 hour sessions. Definitely is working out better for them. I agree, 8 hours is too long of a session for a beginner.

Basic techniques I teach are stringer, twistie, dot placement, melting in dots & leaving them raised, plunged dots, raking, feathering, intro into using the marver to make bead shapes & mashers if I have time. You will find the majority of time is going to be taken up by the student just figuring out how to keep the glass on center! I usually let the students just "play" for the last hour of the class. This really gives them time to get their hand/brain coordination at their own pace.

Good luck, and have fun with this venture!!