Sitges - class 1 Art Quilts by Numbers 1

 Now I have mostly recovered from my trip to Spain it must be time to start posting some pictures.

This is the first of the two workshops I taught, art quilts by numbers. This is one of my longest running classes and still one of the most popular. However teaching in Spain meant working with a translator, which I have never done before. So this was just like being a new tutor again and this time I couldn't hear when my students were having a problem.

I was also worried has my translator was going to cope with repeating everything many times which I do a lot in my classes.  I did some planning before I went but I still wasn't sure how this was going to work.

The organizers found me a projector so I could teach the computer section of the class to everyone at once and it went well. France, my translator was fantastic. It was tricky keeping an eye on the class, but my students were very good about asking for help and so understanding when I clearly didn't have a clue what their problem was. Poor France did indeed have to repeat herself a lot. I think she could teach the class just as well as me now.

I usually try and stay in my classroom over lunch if the students want to keep working. One did so I stayed. While I am happy to give up my lunch I am not prepared to take someone else's, so France went for lunch, I'm sure she must have really needed a break too. Of course this meant I couldn't readily communicate with the student who stayed or those who came back early (and a lot of them did). It turns out years of running out of words was perfect training for teaching in another language. I often find near the end of a class so I have got quite good at signalling what I want people to do. Equally the Spanish students picked up my signals really well.

As you can see the students did really well and produced some great work. Most students were very close to completing their projects by the end of the day, although they were also very tired.