Completing a Task

As a part of a "technology camp" I am completing this week and next, I have several tasks assigned to complete online. The camp is to help us (faculty) to develop courses as hybrid or online or web assisted to enhance students' learning. One of the tasks was to write something and post it in designated places within the virtual classroom. I did and decide the info worthy of my notes!



Task:

Respond to the following, "Other than your academic area of specialty, discuss another favorite subject and how you could or have incoroprated that area into one of your classes."



My response:

Besides my academic specialty, another favorite subject of mine is quilting. One might believe the "art of quilting" is a dying art, but in recent years, there has been a resurgence of this creative outlet. My interest in quilting began when I was a little girl. I watched my great grandmother and my grandmother hand-piece beautiful quilts from scraps of worn-out clothing and other pieces of random fabrics they had gathered together. My love affair with a needle, thread, and fabric began at a very young age when I modeled my grandmothers and tried my hand at piecing quilts, making blankets for my dolls. I was encouraged to "keep practicing" even when my handmade items didn't turn out quite like I expected. I bought my first sewing maching when I was 15 and began to sew a variety of items. I always came back to quilting. Now, for the sake of time, I continue my "creative endeavors" with my sewing machine. I have many quilting friends and attend quilt shows as often as time allows. I am pleased to see many new quilt shops (both physical locations and virtual locations) and if I ever need a project to work on, I can find many free patterns on the internet. There are chat rooms to talk about the newest techniques, quilt swaps (to swap squares, fat quarters, or blocks) and an abundance of advice on the best way to go about making the perfect quilt top.

I could go on and on talking about this favorite subject of mine, but I want to share one of the ways I have incorporated my love of fabrics and quilting into one of my classes. First of all, I don't always choose the fabrics that go into one of my quilts. Sometimes I use a fabric given to me by a friend, use a second choice because I don't have enough yardage of the first choice, or use a fabric because that is what I have on hand and I feel the need to be thrifty. My ten-year-old son has always loved choosing fabrics for my quilts and often has quite an eye for color. Just as often, I have had to be very creative when trying to get the fabrics he has chosen work together, but they always turn out beautifully!

This is the analogy I use when working with my university students in guiding them to think about how the children in our classrooms are not "chosen" by us, but sent to us by their families. Our students are a gift to us and when we use creative strategies to build the best classroom community, the diversity in our members is a real strength. last semester I brought an assortment of scrap fabrics from home to the classroom. I asked each student to choose a fabric that represented him/her in some way and write a paragraph or two about how the fabric represented something about them. Each fabric was different, so no two students could choose the same fabric. The next class period, students cut a five inch wide strip of their fabrics and used safety pins to pin the strips together to form really long strip. At the end of the next class period, I showed students how I had sewed each fabric where they had pinned it and the sewing held it together much better and made it stronger. Each week as students got to know one another by working in groups and through discussions, the strips would be cut and put together in different ways, each day making the fabric pieces stronger, take on new shapes and become very cohesive. At the end of the semester, we were able to display a wall hanging, one that was very strong because of all of the interactions AND also very beautiful because of the diversity brought to it by the class members. There was not one piece we would have chosen to leave out!

So at the end of the day......our students are like the pieces of fabric. We take what we are given and we figure out a way to capitalize on the beauty and uniqueness of each one, blend it all together to strengthen the community in our classrooms. As our pieces of fabric were cut and sewn time after time, we could see how each piece of fabric - at some place in the wall hanging- touched almost every other piece of fabric. We were amazed - just like those fabrics touched one another, so had every student in the class shared with the class members.