Loom Lessons Continue

I wrote of broken warp threads in previous post. I want to add two afterthoughts.

Number 1: When talking about classroom management (and, really, lots of things in life), I’ve heard many “experts” say things like; “you can’t put that toothpaste back in the tube!” or “it’s impossible to get back on track!” once you “lose control.”

If we go back to my warp analogy… the picture for this post is a close-up of a part of my weaving where the broken warps were located. I had to just cut off the broken ones. They were too weak to even tie new yarns onto. I just continued to weave through the gaps. And you know what? Those areas are still a weaker weave, but those gaps exposed more of my weft threads. I could weave in that same fragile yarn as a weft without the breakage. And though the finished weaving is not exactly as I planned; it is still lovely. It still worked out. It took me longer to weave and I was frustrated more often. I won’t do the same again (hopefully!). But, in its own way, it is a success.

Number 2: For me teaching and creating art have so many correlations to many of life’s endeavors. As I share with you my broken warp story, I’m hoping you have your own parallels to it. And I want to encourage you to tell those stories to your students. I always thought one of my key roles as a teacher was to verbally identify what was going on. By describing mistakes, misunderstandings, corrections, results, and even complaints, I was hoping that additional, larger life lessons would also be learned. I could verbalize the process of working things out. Even when the process and/or the outcome was not as originally envisioned.

Don't we all have life equivalencies to that?!