Flame Affinity Group Meeting Notes: Teacher Roll Call

• I’m teaching at University of Massachusetts, and also Penland, Pilchuck, Pittsburgh Glass Center and UrbanGlass. I started teaching before I could get paid, and they saved my paycheck until I turned 15. So I’ve seen a lot of changes happen in the glass world, and that’s been really exciting.
• I teach Plasma Design at Salem Community College. I also teach around the country, various flameworking related workshops. I’ve been teaching for about 20 years. 
• I teach at Pittsburgh Glass Center, Pilchuck, and UrbanGlass. I also teach on the internet. The focus is primarily plasma. 
• I teach at Salem Community College.
• I teach at RIT, flameworking and kilncasting.
• I am not currently teaching, currently in grad school at RISD, but I’ve taught lampworking at UrbanGlass and Snow Farm.
• I’m a technician, not necessarily a flameworking educator, but I’ve been working with the University of Washington Glass program. 
• I started teaching earlier this year, out of Bay Area Glass Institute, they have a really cool program that is kind of developing. I’ve taught there twice, beginner classes. 
• I’m not currently teaching anywhere, but just got out of grad school at VCU so I was recently teaching. 
• I teach at Sheridan College, it’s my seventh year. I started teaching in 1999. 

• Crowdsourcing is great way to get in contact with your students before the class even starts so they can have a say in what you’re teaching. 
• Using the results of online polling, we ended up deciding on a kiln class (for plasma, instead of a hot shop based class). Seeing everyone else lean in that direction helped solidify that I wanted to build that class out. 
• Balancing meeting the expectations of your students, but also trying to bring your resources to the table too. 
• Instagram poll for crowdsourcing, and also put a poll on facebook, where it can stand a bit longer. You can also put a longer standing poll in your posts. I find it easier to grab people’s attention on facebook or Instagram than through email sometimes.  
• New model, where you’re in direct communication with your audience.

• I tell people they can video anything at any time. It’s an open book, and just go for it. If they want to share it, they can, I’m okay with that. 
• Video is helpful because when I teach at the university, I have them for such a short time, and they can practice forever, right? But if  I’m doing something else while they’re practicing, then they can refer to their video. 
• I feel comfortable with small snippets of video for the internet. I don’t want anyone to put the entire workshop online. I think short videos are more in line with people’s attention span for the internet. 
• For my college courses, we record all the demos and we have an archive that students can access for the semester asynchronously. 
• The one thing I make sure is that whoever is videotaping is focusing on me, and I’m the main focus, and anyone else that’s in the frame is ok with being filmed. 
• We have people pool their videos and images, so that everyone has access to it – because some people have a better angle than others.
• If the workshop or an entire demo was entirely online, I personally don’t feel worried about that. Part of the reason people come to those workshops is to be able to have easier access to that conversation.
• I teach at Salem Community College, and we have a camera for the instructor bench mounted in a bird’s eye view over the torch, which is an incredible angle that no one but you ever gets to see. 
• I always tell students to come around and stand over my shoulder, it’s ok. But they are really afraid to. It’s hard to get people to come closer. Maybe it’s a post-COVID thing.
  The camera is hooked up to the “Jumbotron”, a big TV screen, and people can watch that. Demos are recorded and uploaded to our institutional Canvas platform.  I also film on my phone with a DidyClip (neodymium filter), making videos that I put on YouTube as well. 
• Any student who missed anything can review the video.personally,  I’m an avid notetaker, but I can’t always watch and take notes at the same time. 
• If you put anything online, make sure I look good!
• The video aspect just adds another dimension to teaching. It’s another hat that we now wear as teachers. 
• The whole online thing  has changed the way classes have evolved. Now my students can just take video of my demos and have that. It’s really nice. 

• I require my students to take notes, but I find that I don’t know if it’s this generation of students, they just stare at you blankly and they don’t take notes. 
• I started breaking down making each step of a demo that I’m doing  and putting it on a little board so they have each step to follow and that seemed to help. 
• I have a larger group with different skill levels. I’ve been bringing in related objects that are in process, and I’ll pass them around while I’m demoing during the slow parts when we’re just watching the glass melt, to keep the students engaged.
• I love doing a little show and tell during demos. Whether or not I feel like they need to  see it up close, it also  gets them involved in some way. 
• (Note Taking) is a hit or miss for different groups. Some students are just amazing notetakers, and I don’t even have to ask them to. And then with some, I feel like I’m pulling teeth to get them to even bring a sketchbook. 
• Sometimes I will draw diagrams on the board if they’re simple to replicate. I think that’s very generous and a wonderful thing for a teacher to do. But it takes a lot of time before class to prepare for that.
• Before a demo I might ask, How would you do this? And we go around the class and speculate on what steps you would take to make it, just to get them talking and interacting with each other. 
• Tell jokes throughout the whole demo. Sometimes people miss the whole demo because they’re listening to the jokes. But you know, just lighten it up and get interaction between people. Somehow get vocabulary going. 
• Not everybody takes notes, and I don’t make them take notes if they don’t want to. They don’t want to sketch, they don’t sketch. People learn in different ways.
• Sometimes I provide handouts if there’s something I really want them to have a reference for.
• I like leading with an example and then finding ways to shift a mindset. There’s people with different learning methods. 
• I had a diverse group of people with different languages. I made sure everyone can access my lectures and slideshows before I actually do the lecture and the slideshow. And then I will work with them to see where they’re at, because maybe some people may need to have a text translator. Or they have to hear it again, they can’t just look at their writing. 
• The major note-taking that happens in the Plasma class was often during the super exciting part, when you’re filling with gasses and lighting it up. Harry (Schwarzrock) had this great sense of how to get students to take notes there, and that’s what allows you to repeat what steps are happening in the process. 
• I’m working with a few people to find out “What would a notebook look like? How would you organize your notes if you’re going to do that same process again?” It can be challenging to figure that out. 
• I think most of the drawing happens when you ask a student what they want to make and they draw it so I can help them break it down. And I’ll have them draw each step of the way. Then they can work through it. 
• Sometimes you just can’t force them to take notes and that’s on them at some point. 
• “Last summer I taught a workshop at PGC and one of my students took such neat and comprehensive notes, I asked her if I could scan her sketchbook and share it with future students! She said yes! Now I don’t have to make them myself”

• We have an active flameworking class right now, and a visitor here, Patricia Davidson, who just did a demo for KCJ Szwedinski who is currently teaching. 
• We have 14 stations, each outfitted with either a little torch or a national torch.
• We have a screen right next to the instructor’s station. 
• The gas is plumbed down the center. Each table has its own set of regulators and shut-off valves. 
• We’ve got a couple different annealers and a sandblaster in here. 

What do different structures for studio accessibility look like? How much access do you give outside of class? What do you feel is necessary for people to accomplish the goals of your curriculum in order to work outside of class?

• If I’m present, which is whenever the Glass Lab is open, students can come in and work. After their first lesson, they feel pretty confident turning on and off the torch, they each have their own regulators, so nothing’s going to flash back to the other stations, it feels pretty safe. So I just let them work.
• At the University, I had the science librarians come in, and do a little workshop. Different groups on campus are coming in and renting out the glass shop and I teach them a little bit about glass. You can relate your glass to history, to science, to archaeology, to just so many things. So you can bring those people in.
• Get as many people into the flame shop as possible, teach as many as you can about safety procedures, and spread the knowledge around.
• “I like to offer as much studio access outside of class as possible.
• For beginner students, I usually wait until the first few weeks are over when they have confidence. The buddy system is key!”
• “We normally require 10 hours per week outside of class. Still trying to figure out the best way to make that possible for our flameworking students.”
• “A studio monitor is a great standard for an education environment. whether its an academic or public teaching environment it keeps an eye on students of various experiences. This is slightly different compared to a renter of a public studio where someone checks in.
• The safety may not be the equipment itself, but human error or accidents. Create faster response time with some whose primary is to monitor.”
• “I would take into consideration any feedback where students would need more time than what is currently being offered.”
• “I encourage students to always ask each other questions and help one another outside of class (even beginners) because it makes them think critically about the info given in class!”
• “I have my kids have a group chat together and so they can always find a Buddy.”
• “Safety posters with basic set up/shut down procedures and leave books in the studio if you can so students can find their own answers”

• I’m a graduate student and a TA, and I’m twice the age of most of my peers and so I inevitably function as a TA in every class that I’m in, because the visiting artists are my friends and the people in the slideshows.
• If (students) need to be connected with resources, I can help you build a bridge to all of these artists that you’re learning about or that you should know about. It’s making me realize that I’m so much more qualified to be teaching at this (higher ed) level than I had realized. Because I’ve been in isolation in my studio by myself for 25 years. And to be mirrored by all of the young people around me or not to be mirrored is very fortifying for my sense of self, or helping me understand myself more.
• I love teaching and I really want to be here. I could teach in the glass department, I could teach in the jewelry department, I could teach in illustration. I don’t know what will happen, but I feel more driven to definitely teach here because my kid just said, “ Oh, I want to go to RISD.” If I’m faculty, they’d get a full ride.
• My favorite moments (of teaching) is when I can say, “I don’t know.” Because then we can all look at the same thing. It’s important to find a way to have students be able to navigate a problem or navigate learning something. 
• Some students want a lot of info, and some students just go for it. The students who just go for it and are not afraid to mess it up tend to improve exponentially faster. 
• I crack jokes, in the beginning of class I always try to have everyone introduce themselves. Just getting comfortable with people in the beginning seems to work.
• I don’t think I’ve ever not been a student. I learn a lot while I’m teaching. Learning and teaching are always happening simultaneously. They’re exchanging with each other constantly. 
• “I don’t know if it is about teaching or learning, but about the energy between”
• “When I teach, I feel like I learn just as much as the students! Teaching is an exchange, and it’s important to make space for the students to teach you too – reciprocation.”

• Finding ways in the teaching process where failure is going to exist, and to highlight those failures so that they can learn from it.
• Feedback from my students: when I have failure in a demo, it’s even more valuable to them because they can see how I overcome the failure. You don’t always see that in a master glassblower demo.
• I used to be scared to mess up on my demos when I was teaching. But now, it’s great that (the students) can see that I mess up and also can see how I fix it.
• Learning how to fix something is just as important if not more important than learning how to make something. 
• I teach a lot of classes and can make something quickly, because I’ve done it a thousand times. Students get so frustrated because it’s harder when they do it. 
• Students: Your goal should be to play around, and not make anything perfect for a few weeks. You have to learn to persevere. 
• Students suggested bringing in some of my earliest pieces from when I was starting vs. “Don’t show bad early work”.
• “It’s all about not freaking out.”
• I’ll blow a beautiful bubble, then mash it up. Then gather the glass and blow another beautiful bubble. Don’t worry, glass is forgiving. You just melt it in, blow it again. Don’t waste the glass, just keep going. 
• For frustrated students, I have a huge library on glass. So they go into the other room and look through the books for a while and just settle down.
• I assign technical assignments, making 10 or 20 of something, I found that when there’s multiples it is much harder to focus on the nitty gritty details of one thing. 
• I think things can get too “precious” with beginning students.
• With beginners, when they go to the studio in their free time, they might not know what to make, so I assign them multiples. 
• Make a new one, it’ll be better the second time. 
• “Quality through quantity!” 
• These days I’m more focused on 3D modeling with the CNC machining than flameworking, but I think it would be interesting to merge those things together to create some fusions out of it. 
•  When I teach workshops, I don’t finish my demos. I’ll leave it unfinished because it puts less pressure on the student to try something new. I noticed more people trying the technique when I left the demo unfinished, or messed it up. 
•  “In class we review all the failures and try to identify what was missed and why it happened and now I find them correcting/reminding each other to say oh remember when we did that and it failed, don’t forget to do”
• “I love intentionally messing up. Sometimes you have to model intentional failure for students!”

• At RISD, we did a “factory day” in the hotshop. Each person did one step on the factory line, so one person is continuously doing one part of the process. The final result, if it’s weird, it’s not your fault, it’s everybody’s fault. 
• Group project exercise as a diffusion of responsibility. So if the end result isn’t perfect,  the responsibility is shared. It’s not about the end result, it’s about the journey, right?
• Punti ball – you practice a cold seal, then practice puntying the same piece like 10 times, transferring the punti. 
• I think collaboration can be a great way to mitigate failure, and play to people’s strengths. 
• The author can be more than one person. Collaboration and fabrication are also worth exploring. 
• Make a musical instrument that can be played by many people at once.
• I collaborated with an art therapist. We gave out materials that I knew were difficult to work with – that were beyond the students skill levels. Difficult color. We all had our experiences, then we regrouped after to reflect and express our frustration. That turned into a much deeper conversation about where the frustration around failure was coming from. The art therapist was able to help maintain the teacher-student boundaries as emotion was coming up. 
• I try to get students to collaborate with somebody else in another class. How can we bring weaving to glass?
• Through collaboration, hopefully the students will feel more connected as a community throughout the class. 
• Collaborative projects can be an icebreaker, so students can feel comfortable interacting. They tend to feel more comfortable asking each other for help, making for a safer environment after hours. 
• In neon, I’ve heard some classes will do group end to end seals of tubing with teams to see who can make the longest sealed tubing. In neon, you’re always shifting leverage points as you work on the glass, so no one feels the same.

What do your students want you to teach?

• I love teaching beginner and intermediate students. I like to teach the fundamental building blocks of techniques.
• I love teaching networking because once they understand hot and cold seals, they can make anything, or start to go big, work sculpturally. 
• I’m really into improvising and pushing the envelope: What can be a blow mold? Can we blow into food? I try to introduce this way of working.
• Right now my class is into hollow sculpture. All the demo requests have been for animals, figures, sculpting from life. 
• As a student, I’ve found conflicting views. There are many “right” ways of doing things, take all the info and see what you can do with it. I try to remove a hierarchy of technique so that students don’t think there is just one way of doing things.
• Hollow networking
• Sculpting and networking
• From a drawing, break a sculpture down into various blobs and then teach them to hot seal those blobs together. 
• Teaching beadmaking, I get requests to demo other people’s beads and Italian technique, which I am able to do, but don’t feel a connection to. I would rather make up some new design. Now, I start with a generative design exercise that we can draw ideas from, in order to limit cultural appropriation and give artists agency over their own designs. Re-evaluating what success could be.
• When I teach ring seals, everybody makes the same little bubbler. Then I tell them, “OK now take those techniques and make something I’ve never seen before.”
• I began by asking “what is beautiful to you and why? For me that’s often gradients of color, smooth transitions, but there’s so many different answers. Challenge people to think about what they like and why. 
• “My students always want me to teach them implosions or heady pendant techniques lol. I always save that demo for the end of the semester as a “reward”; because I know some people would only make pendants all semester if I demo’ed it earlier!”
• “I also encourage healthy competition, we have a marble rolling contest :)”

• Scribble with a glass rod, dripping the glass to make a teardrop.
• Flame chemistry
• Gathering with one hand
• I like to walk around and observe every student. When I see them hanging up, I’ll let them do it, then I’ll ask them if they want help. Then sometimes, I’ll take the rod from them and execute that part they were hanging up on and then give it back to them. 
• I always try to show encouragement. 
• For advanced techniques, you might need some more information beyond just having fun and playing around. 
• Get students comfortable with lighting the torch. 
• Get students comfortable with messing up in front of one another. 
• “Anatomy of the flame, then compression and expansions, then making something functional with those compression and expansion”
• “A stir rod with a round sphere on the end..”
• “Rings – they can be as creative at you want, and lots of skills involved- hot seal, cold seal, bridging, sculpting, color application, sizing, revising…” 
• “The first thing I focus on is studio ice-breakers with a simple assignment, this helps me understand where people are mentally and technically, and give me insight on how to teach the course.”

If you’re self taught, are you your own teacher in some way?

• I think being an autodidact, or being self taught, you are your own teacher. I feel like it requires the same type of focus or structure of seeking out information.
• I’ve been trying to find a balance between having students teach themselves a little bit and giving tons of information. I want them to be able to think critically for themselves, and find that sweet balance where they can get the info they need, but also empower themselves to ask questions, so I’m not creating the questions and answers for them. 
• We’re all teaching ourselves, even students. We’re gonna be learning from somebody, but also teaching ourselves that that person is teaching us. 
• “I suppose the interesting position that I find myself in is that I’m looking at the stuff that hasn’t really been explored before, so I end up doing my own R&D and kind of pushing what I learn without there really being an established knowledge base.”

• I’ve found just being able to keep it short and simple on the demos, but letting them play is what my approach is. It’s a beginner class, so you’re not looking for advanced techniques. I just want them to get comfortable with the glass. 
• Even though I took traditional flameworking, (when I’m teaching) I’m like, here’s the basics, but also, you might discover something completely new. A lot of my classes are designed around play. 
• I’m in the process of working on some STEAM proposals, grants for kids of color to do science art camp, with glass and experiments, things like that. 
• I’m starting to dive more into that world of being able to pass the knowledge on. I feel like there’s a lack in the glass world, OG’s are still holding on to things and still wanting to support them and take their classes, they’re not like, “Hey, let me come through and help support you.”
• I will be consulting with my first tech company in San Francisco to teach the new employees some simple things about glass. 
• “I’m really grateful for this conversation and this opportunity because it’s kind of like new horizons for me to explore outside of, making stuff and selling it.”
• For me, it’s not about teaching glass. It’s just this zone that you get into if you’re a student, or if you’re a teacher, you’re working together in this energy zone that you have. So it could be anything. 
• I like showing one part of what I want them to learn, but I also don’t want to influence the students creatively to navigate strongly towards what I would personally do. 
• Sometimes students fly a little too close to the sun, or try something beyond their skill level. Teaching is about keeping the pace and managing expectations.