How I Reignited My Love For Teaching

I am writing this after the first Sewing Sanctuary of this year has just finished. And I am buzzing still. It was a fabulous few days of likeminded people coming together to learn, share ideas and enjoy making clothes.

This is still quite new. I have been feeling like this after all the teaching sessions I have done in my new studios. But to be honest I haven’t felt this way in quite a while. Which is why I find I need to acknowledge this now. 

Why do I teach?

Why does anyone go into teaching really, particularly formal education? The hours are long, stress huge and rewards small in comparison. And I know - I’ve been there! So maybe it really is the ‘vocation’ it’s claimed to be? 

I fell into teaching by accident really. As a newly single parent with two children under the age of three I had to try and find ways of earning a living. I had either worked in retail or  fashion, not massive industries where I was living back then. Retail meant that all my wages would have gone on childcare and so I looked at what else I knew - making clothes. I approached the local Adult Ed College to see if they had anyone teaching evening classes in sewing, dressmaking or pattern cutting. And literally a few weeks later I had my first class of ladies wanting to make their own pattern blocks. I had never done any teaching before. I didn’t have a clue. I was given some scant information on how to write a scheme of work and lesson plan but other than that I was thrust into the deep end. 

But I thoroughly enjoyed it! After three terms the admin team at the college suggested I do a PGCE and the rest - as they say - is history. That was over 20 years ago now. 

But for a long time teaching and I were not the friends we had once been. With time and distance I can understand why now. The added strain of running a multi stranded business with pattern design and creation, planning and scheduling workshops, buying in supplies of fabric and haberdashery as well as managing staff and the mountain of admin that went with all of this left little space for me to enjoy teaching as I once had. 

Stress can do funny things to you, as I’ve come to learn and understand. We react to different levels and sources of stress in different ways. As a natural introvert my instinct when pressure was put upon me was to withdraw and retreat from the pressured situation. This in part led me to finding other tutors. I literally couldn’t find enough time to do all the ‘business’ things I needed to do as well as the things I actually enjoyed and was good at like teaching. As ’The Boss’ the only business model I was aware of was to be at the helm running things. I realise now there are many different and better ways of running a business that enables each member to play to their strengths. But I had been living my life in ‘fear mode’ for so long I knew no other way of being. 

Suffice to say that I was in a state of mind that equated teaching with people ‘wanting’ from me. Information and all that was me was being poured from my jug into other people’s but I was not replenishing my own jug of stuff. Which left me feeling empty and drained. So teaching and I fell out of love and became the couple that stayed together for the sake of the kids. Not wanting to let go completely but also not finding the reward in being with each other any more. 

With the closure of SMS I have had to take stock and in the simplest of terms figure out how I could earn money. So I have gone back to the basics - retail or fashion? Fashion wins hands down now - truth to tell, it always will (said in a Welsh accent). So the plan was that while I was working on new pattern ideas and planning other ways of making the clothes I, and hopefully you, want to wear, I would exchange my expertise for cash. That in the coldest of terms was what I planned and needed to do. And that was how I viewed it still - until I actually started teaching again. 

I was terrified before teaching the first workshop in my new studio. I planned it all out meticulously so I knew exactly what to do, even though it was a workshop I had literally taught a hundred times before. And do you know what  - it was fine. No one called me out as an imposter or fake. Nobody told me I didn’t know what I was talking about. In fact everyone left completely satisfied and happy with the knowledge I had shared with them. Indeed several of them booked more workshops. Which is the greatest accolade any tutor could wish for - that they want to come back for more. 

Forgive me if I side track here just for a moment but I have been reading a book called Unstressable by Mo Gowdat and Alice Law. It is a comprehensive look at stress, the types of stress, how to recognise and then deal with them. It talks amongst lots of other things, about the four languages that stress communicates to you in - Mental, Emotional, Physical and Spiritual. If you can learn to recognise when you are being communicated with, you can better understand the stress and how to deal with it. The area we generally seem to be most out of sync with is the Spiritual or soul language. Being true to your soul and what speaks to you spiritually - whether you believe in god or not, means you are on the right path for you. Listening to your own body and what it is trying to tell you will again help you to stay true to your path. 

I am a work in progress, as they say, and I am learning to listen to myself a lot more. Without the Nuisance and Noise - (again more info from Unstressable) I am becoming more receptive to the messages I am sending myself.  To actually listen and hear when I am stressed but more importantly when I am absolutely on my path and in tune with myself. This is why I am pleasantly surprised by the wonderfully positive feelings I have been experiencing after teaching recently. I had thought my relationship to teaching was over.

But the wonderful thing is that this beautiful positivity has been repeated for every workshop or Diploma session I have run so far. Now the realist in me knows that you cannot please all the people all the time, and that’s fine. But the tiny, little flickering pilot light of love for teaching is still there. I truly worried it had gone out forever. But it grows ever stronger with each session I teach. 

I was going to say I have been lucky enough to have some wonderful feedback from recent workshops - but my Coach says luck has little to do with it. It's the hard work and effort I have put into sharing my knowledge and building relationships that has meant that I still have an audience that are willing to work with me. 

So with no false modesty and gratitude in my heart I will acknowledge that this is what I am really very good at. Being able to share the knowledge I have worked so hard to achieve over the last 40 years I have been personally learning and making clothes, and to be able to explain it in ways that other people find easy to grasp and understand. So they in turn can then use it to make better clothes for themselves and for others.   

This is my path as a sharer of knowledge, an educator. Or as my son calls me a Sewing Sage - think dungeons and dragons? And I am truly happy to be on it for now. I hope you will come and join me. 

Jules x