lessons on lessons

Do your lessons before you teach them.

It's not that I don't know that. And when I've done it - my lessons are definitely better. There are different levels of lessons and sometimes, rehearsing adds nothing. Why rehearse a lesson plan where you are going to show a film? Actually, previewing the film is recommended even if you think you remember it well. Maybe one day I'll tell the story of accidentally showing porn to my freshman.

In another kind of lesson, I can ask the kids to draw a character on paper. Then using special animation acetate, I can ask them to "ink" them onto their cels. When they are given paint brushes and cel paint, I can then watch them have trouble staying in the lines – making a mess on their expensive cels. This is the kind of lesson I had this afternoon.

But an interesting thing happened.

As they worked, I started to have body memories of when I used to do this for a living. I remembered how you ink a cel by putting a glob of paint on the brush, setting it gently onto the cel, and using the brush to deliberately push it up to the edges of the ink line. Here's a rule that I just made up this afternoon, but I think is a good one for inking a cel: Never let the brush touch the cel.

Another thing I learned today: I remember things in my body, not in my mind. This is a good thing for me to know. I would say that the thing that I berate and punish myself for more than anything else – even the fact that I still get zits at nearly 40 years of age – is my inability to remember. Ranging from all the stuff I read for my Masters in Literature to the good times had with friends, stuff that once went in is gone.

While I'm a terrible athlete (well, except for horseback riding - then I'm stellar), I do learn kinesthetically. So as I leaned over to help kids, and felt the brush in my hand and the paint on the brush, I instantly recalled the how of this lesson. If I'd done the lesson first I would have remembered all of this before I taught the lesson. I would have saved them smudges and childlike coloring-outside-the-lines errors.

However, here's the kicker: I don't think it's a bad thing for the students to dive in, with minimal instruction. I have a tendency to over-describe the assignment (this goes hand in hand with my other tendency - which is DEFINITELY mutually exclusive - where I under-describe an assignment). When they are chomping at the bit to get the brushes and the paint and start coloring in their characters, listening to me talk will more likely be met with tuning out than with studied attention. And if I'd just done it the night before I would have wanted to tell them all about the fine details of inking a cel. And what was the objective of my lesson? Using hands-on experimenting, to get the hang of the properties of cel paint on a cel. Not, doing it perfectly the first time.

So maybe you don't have to do your lessons before you teach them.